A new year has brought continued uncertainty for schools with the threat of further disruption to learning due to Covid still looming large.
With Omicron hitting workforces in all professions, teachers and support staff have once again proved themselves heroes of the pandemic, with Department for Education figures showing 99.9 per cent of state-funded schools still open and supporting pupils.
This commitment will be vital in helping young people recover from the harmful effects of the last two years.
But as Covid case numbers decline, these effects on learning will sadly not be reversed so readily.
The long term impact
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, school closures have resulted in children losing over half of all classroom time.
The impact has been catastrophic: we have seen referrals to mental health services up 60 per cent, more pupils dropping off their school rolls and 100,000 disappearing to become ghost children.
Research by the Education Policy Institute for the DfE sets out how primary- and secondary-aged pupils have experienced learning loss across the 2020-21 academic year.
By the summer term, primary-aged pupils had lost 0.9 months of learning in reading and 2.8 months in maths.
The research also found that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds experienced greater learning losses than their better-off peers.
By the summer term, the gap in learning loss was around 0.4 months for primary-aged pupils and around 1.6 months for secondary-aged pupils.
Moreover, the impacts of the pandemic are affecting children’s life chances.
It is estimated that school closures will cost our young people between £78 and £154 billion in lost lifetime earnings.
The critical risk posed by failing scheme
The Education Committee’s inquiry on the government’s catch-up programme is looking at whether everything possible is being done to ensure that education recovery is targeted towards remedying the learning loss caused by the pandemic and improving wellbeing.
Despite a financial commitment in the Autumn Budget of up to £5 billion on education recovery, delivery so far would seem to be patchy and there are questions as to whether the money for catch-up tutoring is reaching the places where it is most needed.
In the DfE’s annual report, published in December, it was revealed the government believes the risk of catch-up efforts failing to address lost learning is “critical or very likely”.
This risk rating was updated in March 2021. The report states that despite continuing work, this risk is likely to remain a principal risk for a sustained period.
Randstad, the company charged with running the government’s National Tutoring Programme (NTP), has come under fire for the lack of progress in delivering the hugely important programme to pupils.
Nick Bent from the Tutor Trust told our committee it was a mistake to award the company the contract, as it lacked both the capacity and competency to deliver the programme effectively.
The government, though, has said the NTP is “on track to deliver the ambitious target of two million courses this academic year” but based on figures published this month, the NTP has reached just 15 per cent of its overall target.
There would seem to be a roadblock to the resource being used by schools. A DfE survey last year found that just 29 per cent of schools were planning to use the NTP in the current academic year, with 30 per cent unsure.
Boosting engagement
Given this, last week the committee questioned the company to find out what more it is doing to engage with schools on the NTP, with NTP programme director Karen Guthrie telling us they have doubled the number of providers to try to reach the target.
She spoke of the importance of offering choice and flexibility to schools so that once teachers have identified pupils that need support, the capacity and choice is there to deliver.
She said she recognised that headteachers’ time is precious so had made changes to the programme so tuition partners could do some of the administration and take the burden away from schools.
Further and better engagement with schools is going to be vital to the programme’s success, and Ms Guthrie told us of efforts being made to communicate, including hosting webinars, drop-in sessions and digital how-to sessions.
The government would seem to recognise that Randstad needs to go further and faster, as the new schools minister Robin Walker, also appearing before us last week, told us.
He said the DfE has listened to schools by introducing the new schools-led pillar of the NTP, which had delivered an estimated 230,000 tuition starts by the start of last month - the largest overall aspect of the scheme.
Schools should be aware of the offer and he was hopeful that pick up of tutoring would accelerate as we approach the exam season.
But with that said, the DfE must demonstrate how it will work with Randstad to improve the NTP and make it as simple and clear as possible for schools to use.
Who is the NTP serving?
There also needs to be much greater transparency on who the programme is reaching.
We know from FFT Education Datalab research that pupils who missed the most schooling were often in the poorest areas of the country.
Regional disparities and the programme’s ability to reach disadvantaged pupils were concerning in the first year of the NTP, yet we are still waiting for figures on how many disadvantaged children are benefiting from tutoring and there is no breakdown of the data by area.
Next week, we will be discussing with headteachers from around the country some of the issues that schools are facing using the programme and whether more can be done by both the DfE and Randstad to truly make it as accessible as possible.
The Committee will continue to scrutinise the work of the government to ensure that education recovery is targeted towards remedying the terrible learning loss caused by the pandemic.
Only then can we be sure that our young people are being helped back on their feet to climb the ladder of opportunity to their future.
Robert Halfon is chair of the House of Commons Education Select Committee
