Kate Green – 2021 Comments on the National Audit Office Report on Children’s Education

The comments made by Kate Green, the Shadow Secretary of State for Education, on 17 March 2021.

The Government’s slow response to the pandemic means they have failed to protect children from the damaging social and educational impacts at every stage.

Ministers left thousands of children without the ability to learn, with months of school being missed before the first laptops were distributed to children, and failed to engage to support vulnerable children to attend school acknowledging this put them at increased risk of harm.

Supporting children should now be at the heart of our national recovery, but the Government’s catch-up tutoring programme was supporting just five in every 1,000 children in February, leaving hundreds of thousands of children without the catch-up support they need.

The Government has failed children throughout this pandemic. A step change is needed to ensure they are not also left behind in our recovery.