Majority of schools 'not planning summer catch-up programmes'
Fiona Simpson
Wednesday, July 14, 2021
Just one in five school leaders are planning to offer voluntary summer catch-up programmes to help children recover lost learning as a result of the pandemic, new research shows.
The initiative has been proposed as part of the government’s education catch-up plan but 55 per cent of head teachers have no plans to run summer holiday catch-up programmes, research by education policy provider The Key shows.
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A further 23 per cent of respondents were undecided about whether or not to run summer schools while just five per cent of school leaders reported they will be asking pupils to complete additional work at home over the summer.
When asked to choose their three main reasons for not running summer provision, 88 per cent of leaders said that their staff needed a proper break over the summer, and 70 per cent said their pupils needed a proper break.
More than a third of leaders said “we don’t think our families would support it”, according to The Key.
Lack of budget was another reason cited by a quarter of school leaders for not running summer provisions.
When leaders were asked to identify the three biggest barriers to successful pupil catch-up generally, 43 per cent said they had insufficient time in the school day.
Some 34 per cent of leaders said pupils’ mental health and wellbeing was a significant barrier to successful education catch-up.
Despite plans suggested by former education recovery tsar Kevan Collins and Education Secretary Gavin Williamson to extend the school day as part of catch-up plans, three-quarters of leaders said they have no plans to make the school day longer, and only 19 per cent said they had tried it since March.
When asked how they would prefer to spend the catch-up budget, 73 per cent of leaders favoured implementing small group teaching sessions and 47 per cent said they believed one-to-one teaching would be most successful.
Some 33 per cent said they supported tech-based improvements with schools using the funding instead for things like equipment or subscriptions to online learning programmes.
Nicola West Jones, head of market research at The Key, said: “School leaders find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“While helping children to catch up on lost learning is high-priority for head teachers and their leadership teams, it’s clear that the wellbeing of their children and teachers has to come first. The summer holidays are a time for everyone to reset and refresh in order to hit the ground running in the new school year. Given the difficulties our school communities have faced over the past 18 months, they deserve this respite now more than ever.”