Sir Kevan Collins was told on his appointment as Covid catch-up tsar that he had a “blank cheque” to come up with a plan, an ex-adviser recalls.
Collins thought the country’s children needed £15 billion to recover the lost learning of lockdown. He got £1.4 billion.
“It tells you everything you need to know about the lack of seriousness from government to help schools catch children back up,” says Caroline Derbyshire, the chair of the Headteachers’ Roundtable.
“We needed something really powerful – but we weren’t given the resources.”
U-turns, we’ve had a few
The Covid years are not ones the Department for Education and its ministers at the time will look back on fondly.
The U-turn on exams was one of many high-profile missteps (there were five in a week in the back-to-school debacle of January 2021).
Children were left hungry as the national scheme to access free vouchers malfunctioned.
Gavin Williamson, the then education secretary, threatened to sue schools planning to close over pandemic outbreaks.
Often there were no good outcomes – just a choice of evils
Relations between teachers and the government collapsed, with Williamson heavily blamed for the fall-out.
Angus Walker, a former broadcast journalist who become Williamson’s special adviser in April 2020, gives a view from the inside.
“It was impossible to make decisions when dealing with an unpredictable disease that was throwing up new variants.
“We were getting punched in the face day after day. But someone had to make those decisions. Covid was the reason for U-turns, not ineptitude.”
According to another former senior civil servant, it was an example of how the popular refrain “listen to teachers” begs the question “which teachers?”
While some heads wanted a lot of guidance, others wanted none. “When the department produces something halfway between, people are outraged.”
But Iain Mansfield, a DfE adviser at the time, adds “even when things did work, the guidance was often too late, too complex and added burden for those at the coal face”.
“The policy environment was slightly crazy, often frenetic. And often there were no good outcomes – just a choice of evils.”
Splits in the Cabinet also paralysed decision-making, with the “clearance chain” encompassing several departments and scientific advisers.
Another former adviser explains: “Education just wasn’t a priority in the pandemic. It wasn’t that No 10 had too much power. It wasn’t a Gavin problem. We repeatedly closed schools because we were worried about people over 80 dying of Covid.”
The pandemic’s aftermath should have been a chance for the government to repair some of the damage. Boris Johnson had said education was his “biggest priority”, pledging a “massive catch-up operation”. Things were looking up.
Treasury takeover
Collins’ plan, costed at £15 billion, was based on three Ts: tutoring, training and time. Most of the money was needed for extending the school day.
Despite getting to within a few hours of signing off on a £10 billion package, “the Treasury knobbled the PM”, says one former adviser. It was supposedly done over pizza.
Just £1.4 billion was announced. Collins resigned.
Walker says: “I couldn’t understand why the enthusiasm for things like Covid support loans, furlough, ‘eat out to help out’ wasn’t the same for schemes to help children.
“It seemed the Treasury regarded businesses as investment, but education as a cost.”
Policy expert Sam Freedman writes the “unusually powerful” Treasury “essentially holds veto power over everything that happens in government, meaning it sets the de facto strategy”.
It also causes practical problems. An internal row between Williamson and the Treasury over the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) led to an embargoed press release having to be reissued just hours before it was due to go live.
Williamson wanted a two-year scheme, and had secured £350 million to do it. But the Treasury wouldn’t commit to multi-year funding.
“You can’t physically spend that amount of money on tutoring in one academic year,” recalls Walker.
Instead, politicians just pretended to the sector £350 million was to be spent over the year, which left £140 million unspent.
“They announced something they knew nobody could deliver,” adds Ben Gadsby, head of policy at Impetus. “It was a focus on media exceeding the focus on deliverability.”
‘Government knows best’
It was a muddled start for the flagship scheme, which was also a wider example of the “general Whitehall belief that government knows better than schools”, says David Thomas, a former DfE adviser.
In its first year, schools could only purchase tutoring through an approved set of providers: the government wanted to ensure schools used those it judged to be high quality.
Even at the height of the pandemic, it paid millions to payment services provider Edenred to set up a national system to access free school meal vouchers, rather than just give the cash to schools or parents to buy vouchers themselves.
It took months before the website was running smoothly. In the meantime, heads were forced to wait for hours in online queues, often into the early hours of the morning.
Sir Hamid Patel, chief executive of the Star Academies Trust, says the NTP “required excellent execution. And this is where we faltered.
“Schools understand their pupils’ needs better and can tailor solutions more effectively than a centralised system.”
Schools can tailor solutions more effectively than a centralised system
But Gadsby adds: “The [original] tutoring routes were a bit clunky because there were restrictions built in on what schools could do.
“We were saying ‘here is an evidence-backed programme, and we want you to implement something that looks a lot like it’.”
The NTP later pivoted to hand most the cash straight to schools. For Collins, it exposed a bigger weakness.
He told TES: “The tier between a school and the government is just too big… You need something in between.
“It works very well if a school is connected to a great multi-academy trust or a great local authority, but too many schools aren’t.”
Don’t lose long-term vision
The DfE’s procurement process also was too heavily weighted towards rewarding cheaper, rather than high-quality, bids.
It resulted in the Dutch HR company Randstad winning the contract to run the NTP in its second year.
“Everyone predicted it would be a failure, and it was,” recalls a former adviser.
But Mansfield adds: “When programmes were behind schedule, civil servants would typically just present this as a state of nature … there appeared to be no consequences for failure”.
As subsidies wound down, fewer than three in five schools used the tutoring programme in 2023-24.
As of May, 5.6 million tutoring courses had been started – approaching the 6 million target. Those involved say the scheme is a success, despite the issues.
But Gadsby says: “Tutoring should be part of the system – but the steps for the wind-down of the subsidy were never invented.
“The NTP has actually set back the case for tutoring. The lesson is to not lose sight of the long term.”
The NTP has actually set back the case for tutoring. The lesson is to not lose sight of the long term
Collins says there was an “obligation for a national endeavour and we failed at that moment”.
The wind down also comes as schools are hit by a tsunami of wider societal issues. There has been a huge rise in absences. A collapse in support services leaves schools overwhelmed by mental health issues, child hunger and poverty.
Schools now run more foodbanks than charitable groups.
“Schools have become miniature welfare states, and yet their efforts have not been matched with additional funding or resources,” adds Russell Hobby, chief executive of Teach First.
Rebuilding what Gove tore down
Ed Balls, Labour education secretary until 2010, also says Michael Gove’s decision to reform the then Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) as the DfE was an “act of total vandalism”.
“What we were saying to schools and to families [was that] if you want a child to do well and flourish, it’s not just about their learning… The influences from their family, support from parents, whether they are eating well, being supported, helped or challenged when things went wrong – all of those things had a big impact upon their learning.”
Gove admits: “There was too sharp a turning away from some of the things that Ed and his team had put in the children’s plan.”
Jonathan Simons, a partner at Public First, says it was the “biggest thing government ballsed up since 2010”, but adds: “The wider economy, the cost of living – these are massive head winds … Collins’ plan would not have solved it.”
The wider economy, the cost of living – these are massive head winds … Collins’ plan would not have solved it
Collins is now back as a non-executive DfE board member under Labour, which is looking to rebuild some of the wider infrastructure that Gove tore down. It envisions schools as hubs at the heart of it.
A cross-Whitehall child poverty strategy also shows signs that Sir Keir Starmer’s team is trying to rekindle a joined-up approach across different policy areas, this time under the banner of government “missions”.
That includes things such as SureStart 2.0, mental health workers in schools and supervised tooth brushing.
But Every Child Matters of 2003, which set out a framework for services that cover children and young people from birth to 19, was a pricey programme – and the cash isn’t there this time around.
“For education to have the greatest chance of transforming pupils’ lives, we must look at children’s outcomes holistically – addressing poverty, improving services, and boosting school funding to ensure this happens,” Hobby adds.
Derbyshire calls for “brave decisions. We had a plethora of education secretaries [under the last government]. We’ve not been seen as strategically vital to the future of our country. That needs to change.”
