The government has just two weeks to ensure that plans are in place for summer schools to help pupils catch up on lost learning time, Anne Longfield has said.

The children’s commissioner made the remark in a meeting of the Commons Education Select Committee to discuss the impact of the coronavirus on education and children’s services.

“With the summer schools, I think there’s a window of only about two weeks before they start to run out of time, and that’s a really urgent to-do list on everyone’s part who has the power to make it happen,” she said.

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Ms Longfield added: “I think there is already the capacity there, you have students who will be deferring, when you look at the summer activities, you have youth coaches, you have others who will be able to step in and help, too.”

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In the meeting, David Laws, executive chairman of the Education Policy Institute and former schools minister in the Coalition government, said schools needed guidance as early as possible from the government to implement policies to help disadvantaged pupils affected by school closures, such as a possible catch-up premium. 

“Regardless of any slowness or errors to date, there is now a real need for a proper coherent plan, including for catch-up that schools can implement as soon as possible, certainly by the time schools are hopefully back in the autumn term. And for school leaders, local authorities, academy chains and others to do that work effectively, they need to have as much guidance as early as possible from the government,” he said.

“If we are going to do things like [a catch-up premium] then we need announcements by early July at the very latest so that schools can plan for new arrangements, for potential assistance with home learning - they may need to do more of that in the autumn term.”