My Lords, I am a signatory to Amendment 86 in this group, tabled by my noble friend Lord Storey, who unfortunately cannot be in his place today. Our amendment requires the funding formula to be accompanied by an assessment of the funding to support pupils disrupted by Covid and the ability of schools to support such pupils. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, for going into a lot more detail than I propose to do this evening.
I want to make two points. The first is a broader one. The extra funding for post-Covid catch-up is welcome, but how much of it is essentially baseline budget, and what is the impact of that on small rural schools, versus the highly targeted catch-up funding for those pupils who need it? I will discuss one particular group of pupils in a minute.
I note that the notification on all schools and colleges that will receive the extra funding for catch-up, published by the Government recently, talks about the additional investment also supporting the delivery of a £30,000 starting salary for teachers, alongside a further £1.8 billion dedicated to supporting young people to catch up.
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My noble friend Lord Storey referred at Second Reading to the very particular problem that small schools in rural areas face and how they can be helped, because obviously a very small school will have a very small base budget. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for her letter to all peers on 1 June, which said:
“The Government recognises the essential role that small schools play”.
It said that the “‘sparsity’ factor” budget for small rural schools has been increased
“from £26 million in 2020-21 to £95 million in 2022-23.”
That is absolutely vital for small rural schools. What is not clear is whether that is in proportion to the increasing grant for larger schools as well. I would be grateful if the Minister could say whether it is.
I turn to one specific group that I mentioned at Second Reading, who appear to be left out of receiving support from the Covid catch-up funding: mainly, but
not only, the National Tutoring Programme. ONS data published this week show that nearly one in 20, or just under 5%, of secondary school pupils meets the criteria at the moment for long Covid following their most recent Covid infection. There has been a myth, since long Covid was first described, that children do not get it. ONS data very clearly say otherwise. There is no doubt that the percentage of primary-age children who are getting long Covid is lower, but one in 20 secondary school children is a substantial number.
I have been talking to the clinically extremely vulnerable families, some of whom have children with long Covid, and also to the group Long Covid Kids. The CEV families surveyed their group members who said that their children had not been supported by the National Tutoring Programme; some 94% of these children, who either have long Covid or are immunocompromised, have seen their education much more severely disrupted than that of children who have no health problems but faced lockdown. The worry is that the rubric against this budget describes it as being for those whose education has been most affected by the disruption of the pandemic. The problem appears to be that the current catch-up funding is focused entirely on borderline children who have had support before in previous non-Covid grants. There is a worry that the Long Covid Kids group and the Covid extremely vulnerable families have had no serious engagement either with the Children’s Commissioner or with Ministers and officials. I hope that the Minister might be able to listen to their problems.
Let me give noble Lords a flavour, with just one example of one family. I am an officer of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus, and we heard from the Long Covid Kids group in January, which has published a detailed report. One parent of an 11 year- old and a 13 year-old said:
“My son had numerous hospital visits due to the severity of his cough, he was then hospitalised for 4 days … he was paralysed from the neck down. He is still unable to walk more than a few steps … using a wheelchair, he has not been back to school since. He is still suffering with brain fog, severe headaches, extreme fatigue, rashes, twitching”.
I will spare the Committee the rest, but you get the picture. The daughter also has many of the same symptoms, but less severe. The problem is that, instead of getting support for catch-up, parents are being threatened with fines from schools because of poor attendance. Again, this is because schools are not believing the severity of their symptoms due to Covid.
Last week, the Secretary of State for Education said in Tes that he has
“asked officials to draw up new guidance on long Covid for schools as cases continue to rise among teachers and support staff”.
I read the longer article, and nowhere were pupils with long Covid mentioned, let alone any recognition that those who do have long Covid—those who are being seen at long Covid clinics—actually need that catch-up support.
I hope the Minister and officials might be able to meet the two children’s groups that I have described. I will go into more detail about these two particular groups in later amendments that I have laid for the Bill, but there is a very specific question here about whether these children are getting the support they need, rather than schools using the money only to
fund investment in tutoring for those who have traditionally had access to it. This amendment seeks transparency—that schools have to be held accountable —to make sure there is provision.