A Department for Education spokesperson said:
“We know the pandemic has impacted children’s learning and social
care, and we are incredibly grateful for the resilience and hard
work of teachers, head teachers, social workers and other staff.
“We have put in place a wide range of support, including
investing £5 billion in education recovery, with over two million
tutoring courses now started, and are boosting school budgets to
their highest ever level in real terms by 24/25.
“To help ease the pressure on children’s services, we have
trained thousands of new social workers, and are providing
councils with £4.8 billion in new grant funding over the spending
review period to 2025, to help maintain vital frontline services,
including children’s social care and children’s homes.”
Background on catch up:
- The government has made nearly £5 billion available to help
children and young people to recover from the impact of the
pandemic, including over £1 billion for the National Tutoring
Programme, which has revolutionised the way targeted support is
provided for the children and young people who need it the most.
- Over two million courses have started through the programme,
including in areas with high proportions of children in receipt
of pupil premium funding, such as parts of Yorkshire & the
Humber and the North West.
- Around 90,000 reception aged children also benefit from the
Nuffield Early Language Intervention programme, which targets
children who need extra support with their speech and language
development and is proven to help them make around three months
of additional progress. Two thirds of primary schools have signed
up to this programme.
- Over the next two years we will ensure that pupils continue
to have access to high-quality tutoring, through the National
Tutoring Programme and 16-19 Tuition Fund, as well as sustained
recovery premium funding, which has nearly doubled in secondary
schools this year from £145 to £276 per eligible pupil and which
will be targeted at supporting disadvantaged pupils.
- We are also supporting the most disadvantaged and vulnerable
pupils through pupil premium funding, which is increasing to more
than £2.6 billion in 2022/23 and is the highest cash terms rate
since this funding began. Schools continue to be required to use
their pupil premium funding on additional support for eligible
pupils, including targeted academic interventions.
- In February 2021, the Department announced a £22 million
Accelerator Fund (AF1), investment aimed at developing and
scaling the pipeline of well-evidenced literacy and numeracy
programmes available to schools. In September 2022, the
Department announced a further £66m to continue the Accelerator
Fund for another three academic years.
- Our ongoing investment in English and Maths curriculum hub
programmes will support children to benefit from high quality
teaching in early reading and maths respectively, including
through phonics and Teaching for Mastery interventions.
- Funding for the new National Professional Qualification for
Leading Literacy is also being extended for the next two years
and will improve literacy outcomes for every child by training
existing teachers and leaders to become literacy experts, driving
up standards of literacy teaching in schools and ensure that
children have access to knowledge-rich, world-class teaching.
- See our most recent press release here on boosting children’s
literacy:https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bumper-24-million-to-boost-childrens-literacy
Background on social care:
- The department has been systematically building the CSC
evidence base for the last 10 or more years; the Innovation
Programme provided a step change in both the scale and quality of
evaluation of CSC services and programmes, albeit from a
relatively low base; the evidence generated underpins a lot of
the reforms proposed in the recent CSC Review, from Family Help
services to care leaver support.
- We have trained thousands of graduates to become child and
family social workers through our fast-track Frontline and Step
Up programmes:
o Step Up to Social Work has been in operation since
2010, and works with partnerships of local authorities and higher
education institution partners. To date, more than 2,300 social
workers have qualified through Step Up, and the programme is
currently delivered in 140 local authorities.
o The Frontline programme was launched in 2014, and
current works in around 70 local authorities across England to
train an annual cohort of social workers to deliver frontline
child and family social work. To date over 1600 social workers
have qualified through Frontline.
o Local authorities are responsible for designing
local systems and approaches which keep children safe, and this
includes ensuring that social workers have the time they need to
assess the risks a child is facing and to undertake direct work
to support and protect them.
- In July 2021, we launched a new capital funding programme
designed to support local authorities (individually or in a
consortium) to establish new children's homes provision via
expansion, refurbishment, or new building work. Local authorities
were able to bid for funding to:
o establish innovative approaches to reduce the
number of children needing care over time,
o ensure sufficient provision for children with more
complex needs and
o address current shortfalls, including in geographic
areas with fewer children's homes
- In 2021 DfE awarded contributions of up to £19.5 million over
two years, to be matched by local authorities. This will create
approximately 119 new residential placements by summer 2023.
- A further wave of funding launched in June 2022 for local
authorities that wish to apply matched capital funding between
Autumn 2022 and March 2025 to create additional provision in
children’s homes for children and young people in their area.
These awards will be announced shortly.
- We are supporting local authorities to expand their own
provision, which will help to reduce reliance on the private
sector without reducing the overall number of places available to
children or de-incentivise private providers to invest in new
provision.
- We have confirmed £16.6m of new funding each year for local
authorities to extend the role of Virtual Schools Heads from
September 2021, meaning there is now a local champion for
Children in Need in every local authority across England. For
more vulnerable children, we have made up to £26.6m available to
What Works for Children’s Social Care since May 2020 to test a
range of interventions, including Social Workers in Schools and
Designated Safeguarding Leads Supervision, aimed at improving the
educational outcomes of Children in Need.
Background on early years:
- We have announced up to £180 million of government funding
over three years to support the sector to focus on children’s
development in their earliest of years and help to address
existing recruitment and retention challenges.
- Improving the cost, choice and availability of high-quality
childcare for working parents is important for this Government.
