A report comparing the four UK nations’ Covid “catch-up” work says that Scotland has allocated the most cash per pupil - but that it has not been targeted enough at the poorer pupils.

The Education Policy Institute (EPI) think tank found that the amount is £200 in Scotland, followed by England (£174), Wales (£88) and Northern Ireland (£82).

However, the report says that roughly half the catch-up funding in Wales and Northern Ireland has been targeted towards poorer pupils, compared with 30 per cent in England and 20 per cent in Scotland, while it concludes that catch-up plans across all four nations are “insufficient”.

Catch-up: Why pupils need to feel safe and listened to

Education recovery: Why the ferocious resistance to the idea of ‘catch up’?

Student wellbeing: Deeply negative ‘catch-up’ rhetoric is bad for pupils

Remote learning reports: What you need to know

Also this week: SQA and Education Scotland reform demanded by MSPs

Other findings in the report include:

• School attendance rates in the autumn term were highest in Scotland, at around 90 per cent or more.
• Early years providers appear to have reopened quickest in Wales and Scotland, where, by October, more than 90 per cent of settings were open, against around 80 per cent in England.
• Detailed guidance for schools and local authorities on how they are expected to deliver special education is lacking in all four UK nations.
• From October to Easter, support for free school meals during the school holidays appears to be most generous per meal in Scotland, followed by Wales and Northern Ireland, but funding in England is not ring-fenced for children eligible for FSM “so we cannot compare its generosity”. Funding per meal in Wales is £3.90, followed by Northern Ireland (£2.70) and Scotland (£2.50), but families of children eligible for FSM in Scotland were also entitled to a one-off payment of £100 per child in December.

Covid catch-up funding ‘poorly targeted’

Luke Sibieta, author and research fellow at the EPI, said: “The Scottish and UK governments have so far committed the most catch-up funding. However, the programmes for both Scotland and England are poorly targeted.

“In comparison, we find that the programmes of Wales and Northern Ireland have lower funding in total but focus more resources on the poorest pupils, who we know have been hardest hit.”

He added: “We know that the adverse effects of the pandemic will persist well beyond this academic year, so policymakers across the UK must look at providing additional catch-up funding over multiple years, with far greater levels targeted at the most disadvantaged pupils. Only then will we begin to meet the scale of the challenge posed by this crisis.”

The report says: “Even before the current lockdown, these plans seemed modest and insufficient right across the UK, given the scale of the challenge.”

“With the further closure of schools to most pupils, policymakers should be adding to these resources and focusing a greater share of these resources on more disadvantaged pupils.”

David Laws, executive chairman of the EPI, said: “It is very clear that current education catch-up proposals offer only a fraction of the support that is needed to deal with the huge amount of lost learning time.

“Next week, alongside the decisions on school reopening, the prime minister should announce the first stage of an ambitious, multi-year programme of support for education recovery. The costs of lost learning time are likely to be very large, both in terms of national output and social mobility. We now need a set of solutions that will match the magnitude of this challenge.

“This is a recovery that needs to happen across the UK, so the leaders of the devolved nations must also urgently set out their own multi-year education support plans.”