We cannot allow our most vulnerable children to be left behind by the crisis - Mark Casci

The response from the United Kingdom to the Covid-19 crisis will be judged by our children and their children after them.

The biggest challenge that the world has faced in peacetime will inevitably involve damage to our nation’s society, economy and, most tragically, health.

Some of these will be short-lived but others could have far longer-term impacts.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

What is undeniable is that Coronavirus has not been with us for long but has already exposed stark inequalities in the nation.

School reopening has been hotly debatedSchool reopening has been hotly debated
School reopening has been hotly debated

Education, and the full reopening of schools has regrettably become a political football since the Prime Minister recommended the begin to reopen more fully from June 1.

The rancour seen in this debate has distracted massively from the fact that the closing of schools is impacting most severely on those who are most vulnerable.

This week we learn from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that children from better-off households are spending an additional 75 minutes a day on educational activities than their peers from the poorest households during the lockdown.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The IFS study further warns that if children do not go back to school until September, the gap between the most affluent and the poorest pupils will double to three school weeks of teaching.

As headteachers struggle to look at how they can open safely to more pupils, these warnings can only have exacerbated stress levels.

This weekend The Yorkshire Post revealed the Northern Powerhouse Partnership (NPP)’s five stage recommendation programme as to how the UK can emerge from the crisis as a more fair and prosperous nation by empowering and investing into the North.

Amongst those was the idea for a “Catch-up Premium” - spending of at least £300m to support the most disadvantaged families during school closures and beyond.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

When I interviewed Boris Johnson last summer, shortly after he entered Downing Street he made the claim that talent is distributed evenly but opportunity is not.

In this instance he was talking about the North’s economy but the point can be applied more broadly to the whole nation.

Yorkshire is home to many fine schools and I know from my own family’s experiences how hard teachers are working during this crisis to ensure children are getting as much quality education as they can.

But we cannot overlook the fact that region we all know and love is also home to some of the worst-performing schools in the country in terms of attainment levels. And all to often they tend to be situated in areas of economic deprivation.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The NPP plan also includes measures to overhaul our transport system, vastly improving our connectivity and creating jobs in the process.

It calls for greater focus on green energy production, something Yorkshire excels at, improving skill levels and ensuring that fast broadband links are delivered to every home, particularly in so-called ‘left behind towns’ which are often at the back of the queue when it comes to inward investment.

We know with a fair degree of certainty that support for the Northern Powerhouse concept is high. Theresa May’s Government paid scant attention to the programme and was humiliated in the 2017 election when it lost its majority to a lackluster Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn.

Mr Johnson was handed a handsome 80 seat majority last December, in large part owing to a manifesto crammed with pledges of levelling up the economy.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

March’s Budget may seem like a lifetime ago but Chancellor Rishi Sunak showed that he and the Government were ready to begin making good on those promises.

I am told off the record and on that the Government is not only prepared to honour its pledges for the North but that it sees them as the road map to extricating itself from an economic downturn that austerity measures simply cannot provide for.

But when children’s life chances are growing dimmer by the day, it is they who most urgently need our attention.