Councils have been instrumental in supporting all schools throughout the pandemic, including working to support vulnerable pupils and interpreting guidance to help ensure learning has continued as safely and effectively as possible for all children and young people.
As education recovery plans are developed by the Department for Education (DfE), it is vital that they recognise the role that councils can play as local convenors and education system leaders in ensuring that a series of national education recovery objectives can be delivered to meet the needs of local communities.
While recovery support should be made available to all children and young people, it is vital that vulnerable children, who have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, are the focus of this programme of work.
Recovery work should also recognise that the pandemic has affected different children in different ways and seek to ensure that recovery plans mitigate against longer-term negative outcomes. For example, councils reported that schooling for children from BAME communities was impacted by the higher rates of coronavirus in these communities. Many parents of disabled children reported that therapies and other support stopped during lockdowns, leading to a decline in children’s physical health and mental wellbeing.
We anticipate a need for additional support for children, young people and their families over the coming months and possibly years as a result of or exacerbated by COVID-19. To ensure families can get the support they need, we are calling for the £1.7 billion lost from the Early Intervention Grant since 2010 to be restored and the reinstatement of the £700 million removed from the public health grant since 2015.
It is crucial that mental health support is on an equitable footing as education when we look at recovery. Children will not engage in school if they have poor mental health, thus widening the learning gap further. Any proposals set out for helping pupils to catch up on lost learning need to include the emotional and social needs of young people, as well as covering academic subjects.
It is essential that the Government learns from what’s happened over the last 12 months, including looking into the shortage of academic mentors in disadvantaged areas and building on resources developed to tackle societal inequalities and better support children and young people’s recovery from the pandemic.