Nadhim Zahawi pledged today that he would ask the Treasury for more money if data shows that pupils have not caught up on their learning after the disruption caused by the Covid pandemic.
The education secretary was responding to questions about the uptake of the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) and last year’s resignation of the education recovery commissioner, Sir Kevan Collins, over the level of funding the government provided for catch-up.
Mr Zahawi also revealed that he had met with Ofqual over fresh concerns about private schools’ inflated results in last year’s GCSEs and A levels through teacher-assessed grades.
Mr Zahawi was facing questions from the public today at Sky News’ #asktheeducationsecretary event.
Here is a round-up of what we learned:
Zahawi will ask the Treasury for more catch-up funding if pupils haven’t caught up
The education secretary said that he will monitor whether pupils’ education has recovered and ask for more money from the Treasury if this is not the case.
His comments came in response to questions about the take-up of the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) and why Sir Kevan Collins had described the amount of funding the government had given to catch-up as “feeble”.
The former recovery tsar made these comments last year after he had resigned when the government announced a catch-up spending commitment of £1.4 billion - around a tenth of what he believed was needed.
The government has since announced more funding for Covid catch-up in the last spending review, bringing the total spend to nearly £5 billion.
Mr Zahawi said: “My very strong view is you invest and then you evidence what you do - we’re making a £5 billion investment in recovery.
“Now what I did is I looked at the evidence. I went to the chancellor, I said, ‘I need £800 million for recovery for the 16- to 19-year-olds’... he gave me that, and then I wanted more money for secondary and primary for disadvantaged children.”
Mr Zahawi said he would monitor whether pupils have caught up.
“If we haven’t, I’ll go back to the Treasury and ask for more money because what I want to do by the end of this Parliament is make sure every child has had the opportunity to recover,” he said.
Education secretary will write to parents to bolster take-up of the NTP
It emerged this week that Mr Zahawi has written to headteachers urging them to get involved in the NTP.
This morning he told Sky News that he would also be writing to parents.
He said: “Every school is eligible to come forward and have part of that funding for the National Tutoring Programme. I want them to come forward. I am writing to parents to say, ‘Look, contact your school and find out if they are taking advantage of the National Tutoring Programme.’”
Tes revealed in December that just 8 per cent of the 524,000 pupils the government aims to reach with its flagship Covid catch-up tutoring programme in 2021-22 had started their tuition - a third of the way through the school year.
Mr Zahawi said today that this was in just one of three pillars of the NTP programme and that the school-led tutoring part was the most successful.
DfE monitoring schools’ rising energy bills
Mr Zahawi said his department is monitoring the increasing energy bills that schools are facing but did not commit to providing more funding.
He said that the government had provided a good settlement for schools in the recent spending review because it knew energy costs would be going up.
He was responding to a question from Sky News presenter Kay Burley, who highlighted a Tes investigation which revealed that a school was facing energy costs rising by more than £54,000 a month more than it had budgeted for.
Mr Zahawi did not commit to giving schools more funding to meet rising energy costs and said the department got a good spending review settlement because it knew “that things like the cost of energy” were increasing.
Zahawi met with Ofqual over private school grade concerns
The education secretary also said he had met with exams regulator Ofqual to discuss reports of private schools using the teacher-assessed grading arrangements in 2021 to boost their proportion of top A-level grades.
A report in The Sunday Times said that one school saw its proportion of A*s at A level jump from 33 per cent to 90 per cent in 2021, when teacher-assessed grades were awarded following the cancellation of full public exams.
Mr Zahawi told Sky News he had met with Ofqual this week, after a viewer asked why private schools had used the system as an “excuse” for increasing their numbers of top grades.
He said: “Every allegation is investigated by the exam boards and all the records [of teacher assessment] have been kept… so if there are any new allegations they will investigate them as well.
“They also reassured me that actually when you look at whether it’s independent schools or academies, the children who were expected to get high grades, A grades, actually achieved those.”
He said every headteacher had to sign “really stringent” declarations that they had followed grading arrangements properly.
Call for more private schools to get involved in multi-academy trusts
Asked why private schools have charitable status, Mr Zahawi said he wants to see fee-paying schools do “much more to open up to children from disadvantaged backgrounds”.
He suggested that private schools could help to run or support multi-academy trusts.
The education secretary added: “It’s also important that they play their part…can we get our independent schools to join us on what the evidence suggests is the best way forward, which is a family of schools that are well-managed, tightly managed, really well-supported in a multi-academy trust that’s high-performing - we know the evidence suggests that delivers the best outcome for every child.”
All Covid restrictions could soon be lifted in schools
Mr Zahawi said that all Covid restrictions could be lifted later this month - earlier than planned - if the data supported this.
The latest Covid absence figures published this week showed that the number of pupils off with the virus has fallen compared with two weeks ago but it remains higher than it was at any point last year - with 250,000 testing positive.
The education secretary said prime minister Boris Johnson would make an announcement after the February half-term and that restrictions could be lifted a month sooner than planned if data continued to move in the right direction.
Zahawi defends the introduction and removal of masks
Mr Zahawi also defended the decision to introduce the recommendation for masks in classrooms as schools faced the Omicron variant - and to remove it.
He told Sky News: “If you remember, when Omicron hit us, we went to Plan B, and Plan B included masks in communal areas in schools.
“I went further, because I looked at the evidence from the UK Health Security Agency, and, of course, some of the work we did in the department, doing observational studies of schools which had used masks in the classroom, so further than just in communal parts.
“And we did that to make sure the reopening of schools in January went as smoothly as we could make it, and, of course, we had schools order test kits for secondary school children… in that first week.”
He said that now attendance was “beginning to tick upwards”, the balance was in favour of not recommending masks.
Mr Zahawi added: “We know that masks in the classroom does inhibit learning - much harder to communicate, much more difficult for children to learn - and I think now we are at the stage where we’re probably going to be one of the first major economies in the world to transition this virus from pandemic to endemic, I think it’s right that we remove masks in the classroom as soon as we could.”
