£300m to help students catch up

[DfEisashambles]

Can anyone explain to me how the £300 million Boris has pledged to give towards youngsters to ‘catch up on a year’ lost learning by means of tutoring and summer schools actually means? How will the money be used to help them catch up?

If it's like the plan last year, it won't. Schools could only use certain very expensive providers, and had to pay "top up" fees to access it. No money was given to schools to pay those fees.
The £300 million will be given to some cronies to provide the catch up... but schools won't be able to afford to pay them to do it.

We had absolutely zero last year. We couldn't use it to pay for additional staff that we knew, or to have existing staff to work during the holidays, so it was pointless. Our decimated budget meant we couldn't pay for the top up to acess the ridicukously expensive providers either.

We wanted to use it for ourselves as we knew the students and precisely how to work with them; our most vulnerable and difficult students would have probably just walked out or exploded at a new random tutor. Some of our staff did give up the holidays to work with our students, but we couldn't expect staff to pay for childcare to come to school when not being paid extra for it. We couldn't do October catch up as we had 3 year groups out and 3 staff in hospital....