The following Statement was made on Thursday 2 July in the House of Commons.
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement regarding the full opening of our schools and colleges to all pupils in September.
I know that these past three months have been some of the most challenging that schools, parents and, most of all, children have faced. What schools have achieved to make sure that children and young people are kept safe and can continue to learn during this period is remarkable, and I think all of us in this House are deeply grateful for those efforts. But we all know the impact that lost time in education can have on our children’s outcomes.
Every child and young person in the country has experienced unprecedented disruption to their learning as a result of coronavirus, with those from the most vulnerable and disadvantaged backgrounds among the hardest hit. Education recovery is critical for this generation of schoolchildren. Returning to normal educational routines as quickly as possible is critical to our national recovery, too. That is why we have been working to ensure that all pupils will be able to go back to school and college full-time in September, with Covid-secure measures in place, so that they have the opportunity to thrive and fulfil their full potential.
Today, the Government have published detailed plans for nurseries, schools and colleges that set out what is needed to plan for a full return, as well as reassuring parents and carers about what to expect for their children. The guidance has been developed with medical experts from Public Health England and follows regular engagement throughout the outbreak between the Government and the education sector.
We continue to work closely with the country’s best scientific and medical experts to ensure that both children and staff are always as safe as possible. Schools will continue minimising contact between children, including through grouping children together in bubbles and encouraging older children to distance. At a minimum, this will mean keeping whole year groups in schools and colleges separate. This is in addition to the other protective measures that we know are so important for infection control, such as regular cleaning and handwashing. We are also ensuring that testing is readily available, so that parents, teachers and students can return with confidence. All staff, pupils and their families will continue to have access to testing if they develop Covid-19 symptoms.
By the start of the autumn term, we will provide all schools and colleges with a small number of home testing kits, which will be taken home by children or staff who develop symptoms while on site but who would struggle to access a testing centre. This is so that they can have a test quickly and get the results back quickly. All schools will have access to direct support and advice from their local Public Health England health protection team to deal with any cases that may occur. They will be advised on what steps need to be taken.
In these challenging times, we are committed to ensuring that the nation’s children have not only a safe education but an excellent one. From September, we are asking schools and colleges to return to a broad and balanced curriculum, so that all pupils continue to be taught in a wide range of subjects, maintaining their choices for further study and employment. We expect exams to go ahead in the summer of 2021. We understand the additional pressures on teaching staff to deliver such high standards of education in this difficult period. As such, as Ofsted inspectors are preparing to visit schools in the autumn, it will be to discuss how they are managing the return to full education of all their pupils. The insights that inspectors gather will also be aggregated nationally to share learning with the whole sector, the Government and the wider public. It is our intention for full inspections to return from January.
We are also providing significant financial support to help pupils catch up on lost learning. As I announced in June, we will be providing a £1 billion Covid catch-up package, including a £650 million catch-up premium for state-funded primary, secondary and special schools, and a £350 million national tutoring programme for the most disadvantaged pupils. Evidence shows that six to 12 weeks of tutoring for a disadvantaged pupil can result in five months of catch-up. Schools are held accountable for the outcomes they achieve with their funding, including through Ofsted inspections, and the Covid catch-up funding will be no exception to this.
It is critical to ensure that no child loses more time in education and that, from September, all children who can be at school are at school. Schools and colleges will need to work with families to secure regular attendance from the start of the new academic year, with the reintroduction of mandatory attendance. Our intention is that those with education, health and care plans or special educational needs will also be back in school or college in September. Since May, as a result of the pandemic, it has been necessary to modify the duty on local authorities and health commissioners so that they could use their reasonable endeavours to secure or arrange the provision for those on EHC plans. I am committed to removing these flexibilities as soon as possible, so that children and young people can receive the support they need to return to school. As such, unless the evidence changes, I will not be issuing further national notices to modify the EHC duties. We will, however, consider whether any such flexibilities may be required locally, to respond to outbreaks in different parts of the country. In addition, I am pleased to announce that, as we continue on the road to recovery and infection rates continue to fall, from 20 July nurseries, childminders and other childcare providers will no longer be required to place limits on the group size of children who can play and learn together.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank those parts of the sector that have already opened their doors to more children and who are doing a phenomenal job to help our children and young people settle back into their usual routines. Since schools and nurseries began to open more widely on 1 June, we have seen the number of children attending school steadily rise, with over 1.6 million pupils already back in school. I am sure that I will be joined by the House as I express my thanks to all childcare, school and further education staff who have gone above and beyond since March, and who will continue to do so as we prepare to welcome all of our children and young people back to school and college in September. I commend this Statement to the House.”
My Lords, we want to see every child safely back in school when the new term begins in September, but simply willing it, or even making it compulsory, does not mean it will happen. Parents must have confidence that it is safe for their children to return, and this Statement does not in itself provide that because it contains many unanswered questions.
By September, almost six months will have elapsed since any child has experienced a normal education. A number, although disappointingly small, have been attending school throughout as the children of key workers, and more recently selected years have been able to return, but despite teachers working flat out, few—if any—of these children, or those being home-schooled, have experienced education in any sense as it would have been had the coronavirus pandemic not happened. The result has been the development of a major gap in their learning for millions of young people, and perhaps the saddest aspect of that is that the narrowing of the gap between children from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds, painstakingly achieved over recent years, has been reversed. The impact of lost time in education on children’s life chances is incalculable, but we know for sure that for some, ground lost this year may never be regained.
The Statement talks of schools continuing to minimise contact between children through grouping children together in bubbles, with whole year groups in schools kept separate, but how practical is that? The proposals for managing schools are complicated, confusing and unlikely to work in many situations, not least in terms of the proposed whole-year bubbles. How will they work? How will wraparound care work? How will transport to and from school be addressed? For example, siblings will be probably be in different bubbles but will mix on transport as well as at home. Another practical point concerns supply teachers. Will they be able to move between schools?
I thank the Minister for the Statement. We need to get children back into schools and education, and to be working with all those interested parties to make this essential return successful and safe. There are some key issues.
Will the DfE be collecting data on attendance and examining reasons for absence, rather than talking about fining parents? The Secretary of State talked about
“a broad and balanced curriculum.”
How feasible is this? He talked about the £350 million for catch-up and claimed that
“six to 12 weeks of tutoring”—[Official Report, Commons, 2/7/20; cols. 538-39.]
will give five months’ improvement. This claim is, presumably, based on research but five months of lost education is very different from topping up full-time education. There will be particular issues for special schools, which were barely mentioned other than declaring that all children with an education, health and care plan should be in school. This is clearly impossible, given the state of knowledge about Covid-19.
I particularly want to press the Minister on the estimated 500,000 children who are missing from schools permanently. Some 80,000 of those children are home-schooled and 6,000 are going to unregistered schools; the Children’s Commissioner has talked of 120,000 children who have fallen outside the register. If there is home-school tuition, you do not need permission to home teach. You do not need any qualifications. There are no requirements on hours. You do not need to conform to the national curriculum or have to do SATS—and, of course, you do not have to be registered, let alone inspected. Will the Minister give an assurance, first, that those children who are home-schooled will at least be in an environment where safeguarding practices are maintained, and that those settings should be registered? Secondly, will she take action against those unregistered schools? Thirdly, will she ensure that we have a school-roll system which does not allow children to slip through the net? What we need is an open discussion about our schools returning, so that all our children can begin their school career again in September safely.
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords for welcoming, as we all do, the fact that children will return to school in September. It is the case that many children have been in school during the period of lockdown. With about 20% of vulnerable children in school, there are over 1.6 million children in school. In relation to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, we share his concerns about the progress made over many years on the attainment gap between those children on free school meals and their peers. That is why the £350 million section of the £1 billion catch-up premium is for tutoring directed to disadvantaged children.
On the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, the guidance strikes a balance between giving schools a framework in which to operate, which has been set in collaboration with Public Health England, and providing school leaders with the flexibility they need, given the multiplicity of school buildings around the country. The overarching principle in the guidance is that schools should seek to reduce the number of contacts between children and staff. It refers to achieving this through keeping groups separate in bubbles and maintaining distance between individuals. It is anticipated that the main thing that will reduce the risk for primary school children—who, of course, will not maintain social distance—is keeping groups separate. For older children, it is about maintaining distance between individuals; a year group can be the bubble for older children who, hopefully, will comply more readily with the instructions from their school leaders.
We appreciate that transport will be an issue in this regard, particularly in rural areas. The Government are advising cycling and walking and have invested £2 billion to promote this as a means to get to school and otherwise, but we recognise that it is a challenge. The guidance has therefore drawn a distinction between public transport and dedicated school transport. The most significant difference is that, while the current guidance is that the one metre-plus rule applies on public transport, it will not apply on school transport. The recommendations are that—if possible and within reason—the bubbles of pupils within school should be maintained on the school vehicle, and there should be queuing, cleaning and hand sanitisation.
My Lords, we now come to the 30 minutes allocated for Back-Bench questions. Can questions and answers please be brief, so that I can call the maximum number of speakers?
My Lords, is it not incumbent on us all, whatever our political party, to do all we can to encourage and support our country’s teachers and those working responsibly in the teaching unions? Has my noble friend noted the ways in which the recovery of our education system is being assisted by independent schools sharing their online programmes with state-sector colleagues, asking them to join summer courses, and strengthening the flourishing partnership work that benefits both sectors so much?
My Lords, it has been a pleasure during my tenure as Minister to speak regularly to the Boarding Schools’ Association and the Independent Schools Council. One of the things we have seen during the pandemic is a sharing of educational expertise, not only from the independent sector to the state sector but within the state sector, whether that is sharing online classes, as with the Oak National Academy, or teachers sharing lesson plans. I hope that will be one of the positive legacies of this crisis—that we will continue to share the best of our educational practice so that all pupils can benefit from it.
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What seems to be being suggested for secondary schools requires a huge re-organisation of space, timetable and staff deployment, all to be accomplished in a few weeks. The cost of all this will be considerable—the additional cleaning alone will be very significant—yet schools are being told they have to manage on the resources they have. Is that fair or practical?
On the subject of funding to deal with the crisis, I want to press the Minister on the resources announced by the Secretary of State two weeks ago: the so-called Covid catch-up funding. Last week, when this Statement was presented in the other place, the Secretary of State told the shadow Secretary of State, Kate Green MP,
“there is new money for the covid catch-up fund.”—[Official Report, Commons, 2/7/20; col. 542.]
That is ambiguous. Is there some new money or is it all new money? Given that on the same day as the £1 billion was announced, a further announcement scrapped the year 7 catch-up premium, I think we are entitled to be just a little suspicious. I hope that the Minister will today allay any fears about whether the fund represents new rather than recycled resources.
Exams in 2021 are a real concern. Pupils are already anxious that missing so much time in school will adversely affect their results and hence, potentially, their future. The Ofqual consultation seems to be doing little more than tinkering around the edges of the issues. There needs to be a fall-back position in place, widely known and understood, in case the 2021 exams are also disrupted. There should be a commitment that Ofqual will use the techniques established when exams are changed: of following the principle of comparable outcomes. Can the Minister confirm whether that will be the case? Announcing this by the time that schools return in September would go some way to reassuring students that they will not be penalised because of the impact of the virus this year, and possibly next year.
Even that would not solve all problems and there will remain a huge risk that disadvantaged pupils, whose learning was more disrupted, will lose out disproportionately again. Crucially, I ask the Minister: will track and trace be working properly, with information properly shared? The Government’s record thus far—in terms much wider than the educational—does not exactly inspire confidence.
I return to the issue of a lack of confidence among parents, which has prevented more of them allowing their children to return to school since June. What can the Minister say to parents that will enable their confidence to build in the short time between now and September?
As the noble Lord outlined, we recognise that there are particular issues relating to siblings and school transport, and further guidance will be published on this. However, I think it is widely recognised that the balance now is very strongly in favour of the need for children to be back in school for the sake of their health and well-being. We have carefully considered the risk of transmission of the disease—we know that, thankfully, most children are less susceptible to serious symptoms—and the balance is overwhelmingly in favour of most children returning to school.
On reorganisation, to which the noble Lord referred, class sizes can now return to normal, as I have outlined, and spaces used by more than one class can be cleaned. Until the end of the summer term, in addition to other funding we have made available exceptional funding to cover costs of up to £75,000 per school. This is to cover such things as being open during the holidays, providing vouchers other than through the central system and, of course, cleaning costs. Of the £14.4 billion extra cash over the next three years that was announced, £2.6 billion will be made available this September through the dedicated schools grant. That is in addition to the £1 billion catch-up premium.
We are, of course, concerned, as are many parents, about lost education, particularly for those children who will sit their main examinations—GCSEs and A-levels—next year. As of 2 July, Ofqual has published consultation proposals on a range of possible changes which we realise may have to be made to next year’s examinations. The overriding aim, as with this year’s examination results, is that the arrangements are as fair as possible and give appropriate recognition to children’s achievements. I invite the noble Lord, Lord Watson, to respond to this consultation, which contains a raft of different options to ensure that students can be confident in their results.
On track and trace, there is confidence that this system is up and running. Tests will be available for staff, pupils and their households and, obviously, local health teams should be notified where people test positive. We are distributing a small number of home kits, as the Secretary of State for Education outlined, which people can take home if they develop symptoms on school premises. I am happy to confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that there are no grounds for his suspicion that the £1 billion is not new money: it will be in addition to the core schools budget. The year seven premium to which he referred is not relevant to the £1 billion, because that is now included in the national funding formula. The £1 billion is in addition to the national funding formula money that I have outlined.
The questions from the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on children’s attendance in school are incredibly important. All the statutory obligations on schools to record attendance and any authorised or unauthorised absences will be in force as of September. It is important that we have that information; during this period we have published the statistics on how many children have been in school. As regards the broad, ambitious and balanced curriculum that we have outlined in the guidance, we believe that it is feasible for schools to look at how they will alter the priorities with which they will teach certain aspects of the curriculum. For instance, in maths, it is more important that young people get arithmetic skills than that they potentially learn Roman numerals. Therefore we leave it to schools to do that. We anticipate that the schools will be teaching to the curriculum by the summer of next year, but we have allowed them that flexibility.
Indeed, the statistic in terms of catch-up through the tutoring service—six to 12 weeks—is evidence-based and, as regards the catch-up premium, we have made available information from the Education Endowment Foundation to help schools use that money wisely. I can reassure the noble Lord that we have published guidance for special schools. Of course, they have to do many more individual risk assessments for pupils, but they have the benefit of smaller groups, and they will potentially be impacted by the changes to the shielding guidance that will happen on 1 August.
However, I share the noble Lord’s concerns about any children missing from our schools. He will be aware that the department carried out a consultation on proposals to introduce a registration scheme for children who are home educated. I assure him that we will publish that consultation response soon and that during this period, as well as Ofsted’s obligations to investigate safeguarding, it has also been acting on any intelligence it has received about any unregistered settings. It is supported by us to conduct such visits if it believes that there is an unregistered setting, and it continues to act on that intelligence. The noble Lord is probably aware that in recent years there have been a number of successful prosecutions. The department takes it very seriously, particularly in terms of safeguarding and the provision of education, if anyone is operating an unregistered educational setting.