It is “unclear” how hundreds of millions of Scottish government funding provided to aid education recovery has been spent, a short Holyrood inquiry into the impact of Covid-19 on children has concluded.
The report published today by the Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee says that £240 million was provided by the Scottish government for the recruitment of extra school staff.
It says that “over 1,600 teachers and staff have been brought in as a result of this funding”.
But it adds: “However, the committee was unable to discover exactly how the rest of this money has been spent, and how well these resources have met the needs of pupils.”
The report then goes on to say: “It is unclear how much of the additional resource provided by the Scottish government to support recovery has been used to:
• recruit teachers and staff to support children and young people with additional support needs;
• convert temporary teaching positions to permanent positions; and
• to support non-mainstream settings.”
The MSPs call for “more information from the Scottish government on the outcomes achieved as a result of the resources it provided to support children and young people during the pandemic”.
They also say, given the impact of the pandemic on children with ASN, that the recommendations of Angela Morgan’s review of additional support for learning - published in June 2020 - should be implemented “as a matter of urgency”. And call for a “comprehensive analysis” of the impact of the pandemic on children and young people.
The report questions if the government fully understands what the impact of the pandemic has been on learning “taking account of factors such as rurality, age, disability, ethnicity, gender and so on”.
It says: “The committee therefore recommends that the Scottish government should commission research utilising quantitative and qualitative methods, as a matter of urgency, to provide an analysis of how different cohorts have been affected by Covid.”
The committee has now launched a digital consultation to seek more views from those with direct experience of the education system during the pandemic and to give them a chance to rate the ideas in today’s report.
Stephen Kerr, committee convener and Conservative MSP, said: “It is hard to overstate the toll that the Covid-19 pandemic has taken on Scotland’s children and young people.
“We have heard countless stories of young people struggling with the challenges presented by school closures, particularly for those with additional support needs. And it is clear that we need to continue reaching out and engaging with them as we return to in-person learning.
“That is why we are today launching this consultation to hear directly from young people about their experiences and help us better understand what more needs to be done to support them as we emerge from restrictions.”
A Scottish government spokesman said: “We know the pandemic has hit children and young people badly.
“There are over 2,000 more teachers in Scotland’s schools than before the start of the pandemic in 2019. We now have more teachers than at any time since 2008, the ratio of pupils-to-teachers is at its lowest since 2009.”
The spokesman added that £40 million had been invested to improve Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services and to clear waiting lists by March 2023 and that £15 million had been given to local authorities to deliver locally based mental health and wellbeing support.
Investment in youth work had also been increased over the past year to £12.5 million, he said.
