Education is the “biggest priority” for the country in the wake the pandemic, the prime minister has said.

Speaking at today’s Downing Street conference, Boris Johnson said it has been an “absolutely unimaginable year” for “everybody in education”.

He argued that the “loss of learning” is “the thing we’ve got to focus on now as a society”.

Exclusive: GCSEs 2021 - huge learning loss revealed

Cost of Covid: Teachers’ grim figures on learning loss

Coronavirus: Why there’s no such thing as lost learning

“It’s been an absolutely unimaginable year for schoolchildren, for university students, for everybody in education,” he said.

“They’ve put up with incredible privations in order to help us - the whole country - get through and our future as a country depends on us now repaying that generation, making sure they get the education they need, so for me that’s the biggest priority.”

Mr Johnson also said: “The legacy issue, I think for me, leaving aside all the other backlogs, is education.

“It’s the loss of learning for so many children and young people. That’s the thing we’ve got to focus on now as a society.

“And that, I think, is an opportunity to make amends because there’s going to be, this year, a group of kids going from primary to secondary school -there will be perhaps 90,000, it’s calculated, who will be behind in their basic literacy, unable properly to read or write; 90,000 more as a result of Covid.

“Between three and five months of education have been lost and, of course, the detriment falls the hardest on the kids who have needed attention the most, and who haven’t been provided properly with the time and the support that they need.”