Summer school camps and extra cash on the cards to help disadvantaged kids catch up

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SUMMER schools camps and extra cash are on the cards to help disadvantaged kids catch up on school learning in the next few months.

Chair of the Commons Education Committee and Conservative MP Robert Halfon said summer camps rather than enforced time in classrooms is the current favoured plan to stop students falling behind in their education.

Children who need extra help to catch up on learning could be heading to summer camps

Government sources told HOAR that extra help for disadvantaged kids will be announced over the next few weeks, as some pupils head back to school today.

The announcement is expected to include extra cash funding to help children catch up – thought to be for charities and other education organisations to provide services and school camps for kids during the summer months.

Schools likely won’t be ordered to open, but some school buildings could be used to host the camps.

Teach First, one of the leading charities, has been behind the charge to help give children, who have missed out in lockdown, greater access to learning over the summer, could be part of the effort backed by the Government.

Most children have been out of school since March 16 – and won’t head back to formal classrooms until September.

Mr Halfon said summer camps, rather than formal summer schooling is the more likely option to help children who would otherwise fall behind.

He told HOAR: “The most likely thing is summer school or mentoring and a catch up premium – it would be like a school camp run by volunteers.”

Mr Halfon said the catch up premium could work to get more cash to charities – such as Teach First – who could use it help bolster programs for children.

He added: “(There could be) a catch up premium that is specifically designated for those disadvantaged pupils who haven’t been learning, to give funding to existing education charities around the country to help them scale up tutoring for those people.”

The camps would be important to boost the wellbeing of those kids, rather than just the academic needs, he stressed.

“Schools are not just there for education but they are the organisation that gives a kid a hot meal, they providing counselling, mentoring, support, it has to be education but it also has to be a reorientation – reorientation kids back into schools because they’ve been away 10-11 weeks.”

He said summer camps could use a similar approach the NHS took when building its volunteer army, and create a “national education army” of retired teachers, graduated teachers and Ofsted inspectors to help schools work with disadvantaged children.

Another idea floated by Mr Halfon is to start up a national education service on the BBC, where kids could turn the telly on, choose their year group, and get extra learning in via the national broadcaster.

As many as 700,000 students don’t have computers at home, but 95 per cent of households have a television, so the initiative could help reach the children who have not been able to access access learning online platforms.

While ministers have insisted the time is right to ease the lockdown, almost half of parents are expected to not send their kids to class today.

According to the National Foundation for Educational Research, heads in England are expecting nearly half (46%) of families to keep their children at home.

This means that of the more than 2 million students in reception, year 1 and year 6 classes, about 1 million are likely to stay at home.

But students were pictured smiling as they headed back to school – delighted to see their school pals after ten weeks apart.

Schools today introduced a variety of measures across the board to keep their students safe from coronavirus – with a number of students seen wearing face masks as they headed back into class while others had their temperatures checked before heading inside.

Other schools have seen students needing to regularly wash their hands and time it.

 

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