Government still don't give a shit about kids' education - schools lose out in spending review

[noblegiraffe]

There's a bit of a weird story today in the Times - claims are that the DfE didn't put in a bid for catch-up money in the spending review. The DfE says it did. Gav, who should have put the bid in has gone, so new guy Zahawi is off the hook. If there was no bid, then that means Rishi is off the hook for not giving the cash.

Either way, it means that there's very little extra money coming schools' way for the much vaunted but barely visible covid catch-up scheme. Sources say that schools may get £1-2 billion in the review, schools and heads wanted £5.8 billion, and of course the government's own catch-up advisor (who quit in disgust at the lack of money) said that in total £15 billion would be needed.

Amanda Spielman, the head of Ofsted, said that the majority of catch-up would be happening in normal classrooms with the children's usual teachers, which makes me wonder where the teaching that would have been going on then will be happening instead.

The main focus of parental concern seems to be whether children are in school now, and if the answer is 'yes' then all is good. This is not true.

In the meantime, CAMHS has collapsed under the weight of record referrals and exam classes are still waiting to hear what will happen with exams next year.

Our school is going to do CATS tests in the next 2 weeks to get some baseline data

Some kids who needed laptops while schools were closed didn't get them until schools went back. Months of education missed

And the government didn’t bother to give laptops to anyone under year 3 anyway, so no use in KS1 at all!

How are they doing catch-up in primary?

@noblegiraffe

How are they doing catch-up in primary?

I’m only KS1 but anything extra is going on phonics for the Y2s! The (postponed) Phonics screener is being held in Autumn 2.

I think @Hardbackwriter has a good point- noone really wants to talk about how unequal schools are. For example, @DeborahAnnabel, schools fund the first part of any SEN themselves, so a school with a lot of children with needs instantly becomes much "poorer" than one without. Faith schools and catchments distort intakes. Rural and city schools face different challenges. Some areas still have grammars, others have middle schools, some are academies- there is no joined up thinking. Despite the national curriculum there is no order to teach things, so it was really hard to get any centralised online learning up. I would love to be in charge of revamping it, bit no government will have the balls to do a total ground up rethink, or the cash!

But when it was teachers and schools who were perceived to be failing the children, people on here were very happy to talk about it.

Do they now not think that their kid needs support to make up for the Twinkl worksheets?

I'm a class TA in primary. Due to budget cuts, I'm also providing several (very much needed) interventions like SALT , dyslexia support, extra reading and reading/spelling interventions etc. We also have other kids with SEN that need support in the class but aren't covered in my interventions and two with medical needs that need regular monitoring / medications. There's talk of catch up groups and covering the gaps. It's just me and the teacher and the whole of a normal school day and associated workload. When? With what people?

@noblegiraffe well yes of course parents want catch up but in the abscence of anything extra at school friends & I have got tutors to help our children in the areas they are behind (it being primary mostly maths or english) which costs £££ and is out of lots of peoples reach!

I'm not sure what else we can do about it we can't demand more from school they are already stretched and a petition to Gov will achieve sweet FA. We can only hope Gav's replacement looks at it. If they do the SATs next May they will probably have to act as it will be obvious that fewer children achieve expected.

We're continuing as we always have - interventions run by TAs in the afternoons (so the children can miss their Art /PE/ Science). The TAs are supporting in class in the mornings.
Teachers and TAs run interventions during Assembly time (except, we're not having Assemblies at the moment as Covid is making its way through our school.

I just don't know when the DfE thinks we can fit the catch up sessions in... or where (small school, no corridors - if the music teachers are in the only space is in the Head's office - it's so hard to get people who don't work in small schools to understand there really is nowhere!).

We can only hope Gav's replacement looks at it

If Rishi doesn't give him any money in the spending review then there's not a lot that can be done.

I do think catch- up funding spent on 1:1 tuition in schools often has no impact on the children it is targeted at.
In deprived areas and tough secondary schools, funding targeted at one to one tuition is hard to spend. Teachers don't want to do it because they have enough to do and it is desperately hard to find good quality tutors to come to the school at the end of the day and hard to get the children to stay behind.
I was asked to do a piece of work by a local authority two years ago reviewing their one to one tuition in secondary schools. The findings were:
Schools in most leafy suburbs with fewest deprived students didn't need it because parents already put it in place themselves. 75% of students had 1:1 organised by parents in the 2 highest achieving, least deprived secondary schools. Parents were paying these tutors much more than the funding the governments provides and they were tutors who worked locally and were known between families by word of mouth as very good. They were very in demand.
In the 3 most deprived areas the secondary schools struggled to organise 1:1 because:
a) They could not find decent tutors and if students did not know their tutor already as a teacher they were even less likely to go along. This was a big problem. Schools were unable to find tutors and were spending weeks looking.
b) Students would not attend regularly and often gave up going after one or two sessions
c) Parents (who often had a poor experience of education themselves) would not support the school once children refused to turn up for sessions.
d) Children were often targeted in all 3 core subjects because they had fallen behind in all 3 over the years. It was far too much pressure for them to have on them and would have been better addressed much earlier in secondary school as an ongoing programme.

Tutors had to be really strong subject specialists- the tuition was maths, English and Science- because they were having to identify the building blocks missing in knowledge and understanding, which might be very basic and from years before but were causing 'knock-on' issues in learning, and the tutors needed the skills to do this, find ways of teaching these and then of catching up lots of missed learning.

Often schools turned to agencies who employed NQTs who did not have jobs, supply teachers or teaching assistants. On the whole this was a very poor option for the reasons outlined above.

The impact of 1:1 in the most deprived schools on children who had fallen way behind their potential was minimal and often zero. It is a very expensive, not value for money, ineffective solution in the most deprived areas. It actually exacerbates gaps because it is effective in middle-class areas where motivation of students and parents is much higher. When parents and children are confident and value education and parents pay for the tuition, they support their children more effectively. When parents and children do not value education and someone else pays for and organises tuition, there is no buy-in and no support for it.

Fascinating @LuluJakey1- I think I remember someone talking about a whole branch of economics about people not valuing things that are cheap, but I can't remember what it is called! I wish I had any good ideas about how to improve buy in for any kind of education for my disaffected students.

@LuluJakey1 that is interesting. I know you were reviewing one to one but did they look at other models of improving outcomes for children who aren't making good progress? If it were down to schools, how would they try and help children catch up?