SCHOOLS in England need up to £15 billion in extra funding if children are to catch up on learning missed through Covid-19, according to a leading education think tank.

The government has made £1.7 billion in catch-up funding available, but analysis by the Educational Policy Institute published today says that up to 10 times that sum needs to be invested  over the next three years.

Without “massive policy interventions,” there could be severe consequences for young people’s education, earnings and life chances, it says, with individual lifetime earnings losses of between £8,000 and £50,000 — between £60 billion and £420bn across England’s eight million pupils.

EPI chief executive Natalie Perera said: “This analysis shows that if the Prime Minister is to meet his key pledge to make good the learning losses seen by pupils, an ambitious, multiyear funding package of £10bn to £15bn is required.”

Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, described the government’s response to date as “utterly insufficient” — emphasising that schools had already been “in financial difficulty for years.”

He said: “The solution to Covid cannot be yet more austerity. For any plan to succeed we must also end the blight of child poverty — no longer can we allow children to come to school hungry.” 

Labour’s shadow education secretary Kate Green said: “After a decade of neglect of children’s learning, with rising class sizes and increasing child poverty, the Conservatives’ catch-up funding amounts to a measly 43p per child a day.”

The government said it was working with parents, teachers and schools to develop a long-term plan to make sure all pupils have the chance to recover from the impact of the pandemic.