It was, the prime minister said, his “biggest priority” following the pandemic.

Speaking in March, Boris Johnson said that education would be his key focus in the wake of the coronavirus, adding that “loss of learning” was “the thing we’ve got to focus on now as a society”.

As a soundbite, it wasn’t perhaps as punchy or memorable as “education, education, education”, but the appointment of Sir Kevan Collins as the government’s education recovery commissioner suggested that big plans were in the works to help pupils catch up after months of disruption to their learning.

The Covid catch-up plan for schools

But on Sunday, Tes revealed that, far from the £15 billion catch-up package that Number 10 and the Department for Education had been seeking - which would have funded a range of measures, including a longer school day - the Treasury had offered up just £1.5 billion to fund recovery plans.

Just £1.4bn announced

And today, the Department for Education announced a package of £1.4 billion, less than a tenth of the funds it had asked the Treasury for.

£1 billion is to be spent on supporting up to 6 million tutoring courses for disadvantaged schoolchildren over the next three years, and £400 million will be invested in training and supporting teachers.

‘A damp squib’

The announcement was immediately met with strong condemnation from teachers’ leaders, with unions describing the proposed amounts as “disappointing,” “paltry” and a “damp squib”.

Colleges also described the measures as “disappointing” and said that the plans fell “well short” of what was needed.

Schools will get £579m for tutoring

The package did include some autonomy for schools - £579 million out of the £1 billion fund for tutoring will be given to schools to develop local provision directly. 

This means that most of the new cash earmarked specifically for catch-up tutoring today will go directly to schools to employ their own staff, but the funding is also time-limited, with schools expected to pay a quarter of the costs of their “local tutoring provision” from the start in 202-/22 and meet the “majority of costs” within three years.

The DfE has confirmed that Randstad has the contract

The DfE also confirmed that the National Tutoring Programme will be run by the Dutch multinational Randstad.

But an extended school day is still on the agenda, says Williamson

Education secretary Gavin Williamson says he still wants to see longer school hours, but concedes that more funding will be needed.