The chair of the Commons Education Select Committee has dubbed the past six months “a national disaster for education”.

In an online interview run by the Campaign for Common Sense - a group set up by former Bedford Free School founder Mark Lehain - Robert Halfon gave examples of what he thought had gone wrong in the handling of the coronavirus crisis for schools, which he called “in some ways a scandal”.

Mr Halfon, Conservative MP for Harlow and a former skills minister, said: “The past six months, in my view, have been a national disaster for education for our young people. In some ways a scandal, what has gone on.”

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He said that there have been “incredible efforts” by teachers and support staff to continue teaching during the coronavirus school closures, but that not all children were reached.

Mr Halfon added: “We know that, for one reason or another, millions of children have not been learning and millions of children have not had any contact with teachers.

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“I don’t understand why - the Department for Education should have set out from the beginning very strong guidance on what they expected the children to learn.”

He also said that he thought Ofsted should have had more of a leadership role, advising schools on safeguarding, although he added: “I didn’t want them to inspect schools, absolutely.”

Turning to education unions, he said that some of them insisted on conditions for schools reopening that “very few workplaces would have imposed”.

“I think that one thing has gone wrong with another and I think if we do have local lockdowns or regional lockdowns that has to change,” Mr Halfon said.

Commenting on the Department for Education’s controversial free laptops scheme for disadvantaged pupils, the MP said: “These national procurement schemes never work. The government saying they would deliver laptops in three weeks - it took two or three months to get these computers. I would have given vouchers to the teachers.”

Asked whether he thinks the system is now better prepared for the future, he said that an assessment of the situation needs to be carried out - and should have been done at the beginning of the crisis - in order to decide future policies.

He said: “We need to do an analysis of how left-behind children are - that should have also been done at the very beginning by the Department for Education: they should have run an impact assessment on what was going to happen to the children. That wasn’t done.

“Is it going to be unfair to have exams in the traditional way next year because of the loss of learning? We don’t know that until we assess - and that needs to be done pretty quickly, by the DfE working with schools, and then you decide whether or not you have exams next year.”

If exams are run next year, Mr Halfon said teacher grades, validated by an independent assessor, should be used and not an algorithm.

He said: “If you don’t have exams then I think it needs to be done in the system I described, where you have teacher-assessed grades and an independent assessor. I can’t see any algorithm working.”

Mr Halfon also said he was worried about teacher retention following the coronavirus crisis, adding that this had been a problem for a while. He suggested some solutions highlighting that the recruitment crisis hurts disadvantaged areas the most.

He said: “First of all, we should have financial incentives and support staff, but also I think we need to go back to local training teacher colleges in areas where you don’t have teachers.”

The NEU teaching union have been contacted for comment.

Ofsted declined to respond.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Getting all children back into their classrooms full-time in September is a national priority, because it is the best place for their education, development and wellbeing. This is particularly important for disadvantaged children who may need extra support to reach their potential at school.

“Our £1 billion Covid catch up package will tackle the impact of lost teaching time, including a £650 million catch up premium to help schools support all pupils and the £350 million National Tutoring Programme for disadvantaged students. This includes up to £9 million available for the Nuffield Early Language intervention programme to support those who have missed out on early education at an essential time for their development.”