Recent announcement from the Education Secretary and the Department for Education for new funding to support schools and colleges during the pandemic:
Schools and colleges facing the greatest combined staffing and funding pressures will be able to claim via a new short-term Covid workforce fund, as part of the government’s national priority of keeping education settings open.
The Department for Education announced last Friday the fund which will be backdated to 01 November and cover the current half term, with detailed guidance due to be published shortly. It is designed for schools and colleges facing significant funding pressure, and will cover the costs of high levels of staff absences over a minimum threshold, to help ensure schools and colleges can remain open.
This new package of funding is in addition to the biggest increase to core school funding in a decade, including a £2.6 billion boost this year and a further £2.2 billion next year, as well as support given to schools in the summer to cover exceptional Covid-related costs.
Throughout the pandemic, schools and colleges have been rising to the challenges presented by coronavirus, maintaining high quality education and support for their pupils. The government will continue to review the pressures schools and colleges are facing into next term, and continue to explore how mass testing can play a greater role in keeping them open in the new year for all pupils to attend full time.
An updated contingency framework for all education settings has also been published today. This sets out how government would manage the exceptional circumstances in which further restrictions were required on education to help contain virus transmission within a community.
The framework is not a guide to operational management of education in local areas or individual education settings.
The government hopes never to have to implement the restrictions set out in the framework. Any implementation remains a decision for central government, working closely with local leaders, and would only come as a last resort to control extremely high prevalence of the virus if all other measures had been exhausted.
Keeping all education settings open remains a national priority, and today’s additional funding and clarity over the contingency framework will help settings remain open over the winter months.
For more information, please do have a read here.
