Schools are likely to be presented with a “suite of opportunities” rather than having a completely free choice over how extra Covid catch-up cash should be used, the government’s education recovery tsar has suggested.
Asked by Tes whether he thought schools should be able to decide how to spend any extra catch-up funding, Sir Kevan Collins said: “You have to understand for me that, when you try to close the gap or to meet this need, it has to be essentially rooted in the knowledge of the child and of children.
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“And schools are best placed to understand and know exactly what these learning needs are. So, a school-led Covid recovery is one that I think makes sense, but I think that also then needs to be guided by and informed by the evidence.
Covid catch-up: ‘A suite of opportunities’ for schools
“So you can imagine a kind of suite of opportunities that schools might want to draw from.”
Sir Kevan said that “schools are doing much of this already”, but they would need to be provided with the “resources” and “information” to “pull together” their recovery plans.
“We’ve got tutoring in place in many schools now, we’ve got schools doing lots of innovative work online, we’ve got schools last year running summer schools - there’s nothing new about any of this, as ever,” he said.
“But it’s about supporting schools with the resources and with the information, with the evidence, so they can pull together what their children really need and what works for them.”
In his interview with Tes yesterday, Sir Kevan said he will need more money from the government to deliver his ideal education recovery plan.
Asked if he was hopeful of more money from the Treasury - in addition to the £1.3 billion already announced - Sir Kevan said: “Short answer: yes.”
He added: “The scale of this shock means that we have to be ready to be fearless in what we do, and that is going to take more resources, and that is something that people understand and, I think, the prime minister, in his own statements, has accepted.”
It has emerged that the government is expecting Sir Kevan’s work to include the consideration of the different levels of Covid learning loss suffered among GCSE and A-level students across the country.
The government previously said it would establish an “expert group” to address this issue and “provide advice...on our ongoing response to the differential effect of the pandemic disruption that students are facing”.
But a month on no more had been heard and the Department for Education has now said that, in light of Sir Kevan’s appointment, it will not be creating the expert group after all.
The DfE confirmed to Tes today that no members were ever appointed to the group, as it was never established.
James Bowen, director of policy for school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “While all children will have been affected by lockdown, we need to remember that they will have been affected in different ways and each to a different extent.
“It is for this reason we need to avoid superficially appealing, but overly simplistic short-term responses...
“Rather than jumping to quick fixes focused purely on academic ‘catch-up’, we need to trust schools to put in place a long-term approach based on what they know about the needs of their pupils.”
Geoff Barton, Association of School and College Leaders general secretary said: “We are pleased that Sir Kevan is looking at a range of catch-up options and we look forward to discussing the detail with him.
“It is important that approaches are rooted in evidence and are led by schools based on their knowledge of their pupils and their needs.
“The idea of a suite of options is interesting but it will be important to ensure this is sufficiently flexible to allow schools to tailor their programmes and is not too restrictive.”
