The pandemic has been nothing short of a national disaster for our young people.

On average, children’s learning dropped to just 2.5 hours a day and we are seeing a 60 per cent increase in young people’s mental health referrals.

A rise in safeguarding risks and loss of lifetime chances will mean an even bigger long-term impact on children’s recovery.

Even now, the children’s commissioner has reported that almost two million students have not returned to school.  

However, this impact was not felt equally across England. Richer schools in more affluent areas were far more capable of weathering Covid than those without the resources to keep students learning.

Our new report Is the Catch-up Programme fit for purpose? found some concerning evidence of inequality in learning during Covid.  

Our Committee heard that, by summer term 2021, the gap between disadvantaged pupils and their more affluent peers in reading was around 0.4 months for primary aged pupils, and around 1.6 months for secondary pupils.

Regional disparities 

By region, it is even worse.

By the second half of the autumn term 2020, the average learning loss in maths for primary pupils was 5.3 months in Yorkshire and the Humber, compared with just 0.5 months in the south-west. 

The government have invested almost £5 billion into education recovery, as well as establishing the National Tutoring Programme (NTP).

These are both welcome interventions but there are outstanding questions as to whether the NTP is working, and reaching the most disadvantaged pupils - those who need its support the most.

The most up-to-date data we have shows that the NTP has reached 100 per cent of its target numbers of schools in the south-west of England and 96.1 per cent in the south-east.

However, it has reached just 58.8 per cent in the north-east, 58.9 per cent in Yorkshire and the Humber and 59.3 per cent in the north-west. In the East of England, this was only 61.4 per cent. 

This data was published in March 2021 but neither Randstad (the NTP’s current provider) or the Department for Education have been able to tell us if targets for delivering tuition to disadvantaged children are being met.

What we do know is that, as of 12 December 2021, just 52,000 courses had been started by pupils through the tuition partners pillar - only 10 per cent of Randstad’s target for this year. 

Moreover, last week, Randstad announced that the target to reach 65 per cent of pupil premium eligible children through its tuition partner pillar had been dropped.

Prove it’s working - or ditch it

In our new report, we called on the government to prove that the NTP is working through the publication of regular, region-specific data.

If they are unable to do this, the government should free themselves from their multi-million-pound contract with Randstad.

It’s not fair for students, who have already suffered so much upheaval during this pandemic, to face failing support purely because of their postcode.  

While levelling out educational attainment is a fundamental priority, the government must also focus on controlling the spiralling mental health crisis in our schools.

Our committee heard that one in six children between the ages of 6-16 currently suffer from a probable mental health disorder.

While the pandemic isn’t the only factor, it’s clear that it has had a devastating impact.

The number of children referred for mental health help in 2019-20 increased by nearly 60 per cent compared with 2017-2018. 

What we need to do

We need wide-ranging, targeted measures to stop this crisis in its tracks. So, the Committee is recommending four key actions:  

First: the Department of Education should fast track its commitment to ensure that all schools have a designated mental health lead.  

Second: All students in schools should go through a mental health assessment so that we can understand the scale and shape of the problem.  

Third: As has been done in Wales, the government should launch a pilot scheme in the country’s most disadvantaged areas to explore facilitating a longer school day.

Activities like sport, music and drama have been shown to boost children’s wellbeing and educational attainment and must be considered as part of the recovery programme.

Fourth: Our report calls for a levy on the profits of big social media firms that could be distributed through schools to support online harm and mental health resilience training.

For example, 16.7 per cent of 11- to 16-year-olds using social media agreed that the number of likes, comments and shares they received had an impact on their mood.

More worryingly, around one in seven girls report being unhappy with the way they look at the end of primary school, rising to almost one in three by age 14. Social media companies should not be profiting from childhood misery.

At the very least they should help mitigate the damage their products have done to children.

Robert Halfon is chair of the House of Commons Education Select Committee