Support for Left-Behind Children — House of Commons, 2020-07-07
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): As my hon. Friend will know, sixth-form colleges are not included in the catch-up premium. We are continuing to work with sixth-form colleges and other post-16 institutions to establish the best way to make up the disruption due to covid-19. On free school meals over the summer, we will provide further details for FE colleges in due course. During term time, FE colleges should continue to provide support to students eligible for free school meals We have secured significant additional resources from the Treasury so that every school will have extra funding to respond to this unique challenge. On 19 June, we announced a £1 billion covid catch-up package to directly tackle the impact of lost teaching time, including £650 million directly to schools over the 2020-21 academic year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bury South intimated, the Education Endowment Foundation will provide evidence-based advice on the most effective approaches to helping children catch up, but the discretion lies at school level, with the teachers and headteachers The catch-up package also includes a national tutoring programme worth £350 million to increase access to high-quality tuition for the most disadvantaged young people. This £1 billion package is on top of the three-year £14.4 billion funding increase announced last year and the £2.4 billion pupil premium. We have also committed more than £100 million to supporting remote education. By the end of June, over 202,000 laptops and tablets and over 47,000 4G wireless routers had been delivered or dispatched to academy trusts and local authorities for pupils without the means to access remote education. It was a huge logistical exercise in a demanding global market for these pieces of equipment. To support pupils at home, 40 top teachers came together to create our new virtual school, the Oak National Academy, which offers 180 online lessons a week for all pupils. In response to the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), I should add that £205 million has been redeemed in food vouchers by families and schools As we announced last year, we are increasing core schools funding by £2.6 billion this academic year and by £4.8 billion and £7.1 billion by 2021-22 and 2022-23 respectively, compared to 2019-20, including additional funding for children with special needs and disabilities. On top of that, we are providing £1.5 billion per year to fund additional pension costs for teachers. Overall, this will bring the schools budget to £52.2 billion by 2022-23.[Official Report, 15 July 2020, Vol. 678, c. 9MC.] Our commitment to helping every child to reach their potential applies just as strongly to children with special educational needs and disabilities as to any other child. We know that schools share that commitment, but we recognise concerns raised about the cost of high-needs provision. We have increased overall funding allocations to local authorities year on year, and high-needs funding will be £7.2 billion this year—up from £5 billion in 2013. My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) was also right to highlight the £1.7 billion of accumulated surpluses in local authority schools Creating more school places is a key part of the Government’s plan to ensure that every child has the opportunity of a place at a good school, whatever their background. We have committed £7 billion for school places between 2015 and 2021, on top of the free schools programme. This money means we are on track to have created 1 million school places this decade—the largest increase in school capacity for at least two generations Alongside new school places, we have allocated more than £7.4 billion since 2015 to maintain and improve school buildings. On 29 June, the Prime Minister announced over £1 billion to fund the first 50 projects of a new 10-year school rebuilding programme as part of radical plans that will invest in our school and college buildings to help deliver the world-class education and training needed to bring prosperity to our country I thank all those who work in the early years sector, who dedicate their time, effort and skills to provide high-quality childcare. Our ambition is to provide equality of opportunity for every child and to support parents and carers. Disadvantaged two-year-olds are entitled to at least 15 hours of free early education each week, and over 1 million children have benefited from this since we introduced the programme in September 2013. In addition, in 2017 we introduced the 30-hours entitlement for working parents of three and four-year-olds, and in January 2020 some 345,000 three and four-year-olds benefited from a 30-hours place—an increase on the previous year This has been a good debate, and today’s estimates are a reflection of the country’s commitment to education and the key priority that it is for this Government. Since 2010, most children are now attending good or outstanding schools. The attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers has narrowed at all stages. A record proportion of disadvantaged students are going to university, and we have a world-class curriculum and ambitions for world-class technical education The effects of the current epidemic will be felt across society for a considerable time. It was right that we moved rapidly to secure a massive one-off investment in our schools to tackle lost time in education and to foster a greater focus on proven approaches so that all pupils can receive the education that they have a right to expect.