Winchester’s MP raised concerns about academic testing, catch-up and mental health as schools prepare to fully re-open on March 8th.
Leading a debate alongside Education Committee Chair, Robert Halfon, Steve Brine told the Commons; “On the catch-up programme, I welcome the one-off recovery premium and the fact that it is for schools to use “as they feel best”, as per the Government’s statement, but we would be wrong to rest on that. It cannot remain a one-off.
“On the national tutoring programme, £300 million is a lot of money. I know that the Department for Education has said that it has been shown to boost catch-up learning by as much as three to five months at a time, but I want to be reassured—this may be one for my right hon. Friend’s Select Committee in due course—that external tutors, who do not know the pupils, their profile as learners or the individual strategies used by an individual school to ensure consistency in the approach to that learning, continue to be the best way to spend that large amount of money.
“On mental health and anxiety, I think that educational catch-up in my area will be okay in the short to medium term, but the anxiety and the mental health challenge that I am hearing about, and which I referred to at the start, is structural. There is a structural weakness that is undermining it all. I have heard from so many constituents and parents who have said that, of course, they are pleased that schools are going back from 8 March, but their children are nervous about going back. They are incredibly anxious about doing this, and that structural challenge will be with them long after the catch-up programmes have done, hopefully, their best. I have to say, masks for the anxious are really not helping, so I very much welcome the Government’s intention to review that after the Easter holidays.”
The MP, who liaised with dozens of constituency heads ahead of the debate, also raised the prospect of a review of academic testing in primary schools given they have now been suspended for two years. “We must be brave and face the issue of statutory testing at primary levels at this time; this may be the moment to draw breath and check that they are what we want to do.”
More information …
