Preparations begin in North Yorkshire to help students catch-up on missed education

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has announced a national £1 billion package of support to tackle the impact of lost teaching time.

A total of £650 million of this one-of financial payment will be shared across state primary and secondary schools over the 2020/21 academic year, from September.

The remaining £350 million will be used to help the most disadvantaged young people access to high-quality tuition, through a National Tutoring Programme to prevent the gap between them and their more affluent peers widening.

Although final details of the funding is yet to be announced, headteachers in North Yorkshire are now looking at the most appropriate form of catch-up education for their individual school.

Stuart Carlton, corporate director of children and young people’s services, said: “School leaders and staff will be looking at how best to use the Government’s funding for catch-up education.

“There will be a no one-size-fits-all approach to this; schools will be making their decisions based on the needs of their pupils, the availability of teaching staff and other considerations. It may be they run intervention programmes, bring in extra teaching capacity or “bolt-on” lessons at the end of the traditional school day.

“But the county council and North Yorkshire’s schools are all completely committed to making sure no child’s education loses out as a result of the pandemic and will be working very hard to make sure we get every pupil to where they need to be in their academic progress.

“Pupils, teachers and parents in North Yorkshire have had to adapt to some very challenging circumstances over the last few months and I would like to thank them for their work.”

Further announcements are expected from the Government on when other year groups will be returning to secondary school. Students in Years 10 and Years 12 currently have some face-to-face teaching time in school, as they study for exams they are due to sit next year. A quarter of these year groups in school at any one time.