Rishi Sunak’s schools test in Budget – The Yorkshire Post says

For, while the Covid pandemic has made it difficult for the Richmond MP to do so in his previous financial statements, next week’s setpiece speech is now a defining moment made even more urgent by a new report on the funding of schools.

Ex schools catch-up tsar increases pressure on Rishi Sunak for funding answers – The Yorkshire Post says

It comes after Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee – effectively the public spending watchdog – published a damning critique which concluded that schools and pupils in deprived areas have been “hit hardest” by the Department for Education’s school funding changes.

The complete opposite to levelling up’s supposed objectives, it also pointed to a scandalous lack of urgency at the DfE – a legacy of Gavin Williamson’s disastrous two years as Education Secretary.

But Mr Sunak also needs to accept his share of responsibility. After all, he is the Chancellor who rejected the £15bn schools catch-up plan submitted by Sir Kevan Collins, the headteacher hired by Boris Johnson to help schools and pupils catch up on lost learning in the wake of the Covid pandemic.

And while the Treasury has, in fairness, allocated £3bn in total for tutoring, the PAC and others say that this is the fraction of the amount which is needed if there’s to be equality of opportunity across the country.

Mr Sunak has previously told this newspaper that he was motivated to go into politics by a desire to improve education. Now is his chance to prove that he’s still a man of his word.

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