Now on Bbc News we look at the long term effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic on education. Hello and welcome. The Autumn Term is under way across the uk now, with everyone hoping that the disruption of the last 18 months is behind us. Yet covid and the pandemic has left a legacy. For the next half an hour, my guests will be discussing that how best to Help Pupils to Catch Up, how to address the Mental Health Problems, and what permanent changes can be made in schools to make Post Pandemic Education better than what came before. Joining me are Natalie Perea from the education policy institute, Jules White headteacher at Tanbridge House School in surrey. With me in the studio, Mary Bousted co general secretary at the national education union. Thank you, mary, for coming in with us and to both of you forjoining us. Remember the governments � Catch Up tsar� . Kevin collins was appointed to coordinate the School Recovery across england. His message to the government was itll cost you, Up To £15 Billion, were told, to Help Pupils to Catch Up on the Learning Theyve missed. Boris johnson balked at that figure, apparently. In all, the treasury has allocated £3. 1 billion about 12 Billion less than Kevin Collins advised. He resigned. You dont have that luxury. How hard is this process of Catch Up . It is very hard, its important to talk about the context, over a ten Year Period schools have faced pretty serious declines in our resourcing, budgets and capacity so now we are faced with unprecedented circumstances to try and help students to Catch Up not only on their learning but in vital social interaction in their development. There are a myriad of challenges out there. We are struggling. Schools are set up well. There have been some sensible ideas around Catch Up, around things like tuition and extra support but at the moment we have to think about not just short term but a long Term Plan as well. And at a time when youre trying to continue with the existing learning for the coming year, presumably, across years where pupils have moved up in the school or moved from primary to secondary, if there is a legacy of lost learning in the previous 12 18 months, that could have a significant lag on their ability to meet the goals you are setting them now . Absolutely. By everyone� s estimation most youngsters have lost three months to six Months Loss of learning. 0ften those with special Education And Learning needs have had a very difficult time as well. We are doing this against a background where there is not much capacity within schools as it is, we already use after School Tuition and we are set up for Holiday Programmes for Summer Schools so trying to just Catch Up with where we are now is a really big challenge in itself but then to make up for the lost learning, for all the challenges, trying to help youngsters overcome really significant social, emotional challenges, it is a very difficult picture and to be honest, most of us within the profession were delighted to see the appointment of Kevin Collins and hear about his recommendations. He was ambitious for children and we were equally disappointed, feeling short changed by the provision which has been given. We recognise £3 billion is a lot of money but it is not enough to make up for the things we have just been discussing. Natalie, let me ask you about the research that has been done in this area, has anyone tried to measure what kind of amount of falling behind that has been either in particular subject or ages, presumably it varies from pupil to pupil, give us a sense of what the impact has been. Yes, absolutely, we must remember that the national exams, gcses and a levels, we have used Teacher Assessed Grades for the last two years so that does not give us a comparable picture based on previous years. But what we have been doing in my organisation is using almost real time Assessment Data by a private Learning And Assessment provider. We have been doing that analysis for the government in fact to look at the extent of lost learning over the last year. What we have found is that young people are on average about 3. 5 months behind. This was back in the Spring Term so around march 2020. So 3. 5 months behind in maths and two months behind on average in reading but importantly, going back to what jules was saying, those gaps are wider for pupils from vulnerable and disadvantaged backgrounds. So in other words there is a double whammy, some poorer schools suffered more from covid in terms of the length of closures and families affected by it especially in parts of the north west, merseyside, local authorities there, but then because of that, the kind of Catch Up is much worse for them or much bigger rather. Yes, we see wide gaps especially in the north east, yorkshire and humber for example and that is where we think government needs to be targeting the extra money. What is your perspective on this because in a previous life you were an English Teacher so you are suddenly faced with kids all of whom have this lag, that is quite a problem to deal with in the classes. It makes a huge demand on the professional skills of teachers because they have to first of all provide an assessment of how much Learning Loss has been for different children. It will not be the same, some children at home have access to remote learning, some have rooms to work in, some have parents, others dont. In all classes there will be differential losses of learning from children, then you have to assess that, then you have to work out how you will address those gaps in different children. And actually, because learning time has been lost, teachers have also got to think what is the essential knowledge and skills which are needed and what can we leave to be caught up another time . Because we have a curriculum that is very content driven so what are the essential elements of it . All those are highly professional decisions which teachers are making as well as teaching full time. A lot of this is being done on an individual basis within schools because there is no template is there . No, there is no template. It was a fine tuned, finely honed professional skill which teachers have from their Experience And Training and knowledge. What was wrong with the Funding Package in yourjudgment that the government announced, it was a long way short of what Kevin Collins proposed or we are told he proposed but there is this 3. 1 billion figure, what is wrong with in terms of not being enough money, is it in terms of how its been targeted and what it is being used for . First of all that is just not enough. Kevin collins said 15 Billion. He openly said that. Natalie� s institute said 13. 5 Billion so Three Billion when the Prime Minister said he would make education a top priority, then to leave schools with Three Billion. But there will be more money down the line. Yes but i would prefer from this government the money now. Than a promise in the future. In terms of what the money would be used for, whether the bit of money you can get right now, individual schools make these judgments all the time presumably . I saw some of the notes to the producer of this programme, sometimes schools have used Pupil Premium Money to subsidise other parts of the budget where they think that is that bigger problem. It is creative management you can engage in on an individual basis in schools. Yes, i think our budgets overall for the last ten years have been declining. We saw input of money back in 2019 that has helped but i think all the time schools are riding on the rivet, we do not have much capacity often, we use Ring Fence Money to prop up our own budgets. Nobody is going to sniff at £3 billion, that will help with some of the extra tuition that particularly disadvantaged children get but we are seeing need on a really huge scale. Whilst we want to target support for disadvantaged children, all children have suffered. We are seeing burgeoning amounts of need around mental Health Support, around self harm, we have seen astronomical numbers around domestic violence, around eating disorders. All of these matters affecting so many young people, they all need to be addressed and they are all labour intensive requiring special skills. Not just specialist skills from teachers but from educational psychologists, professional mentors, language therapists. If were going to be really ambitious about this Catch Up, we cannot just look at one single target, we have to look ambitiously at Education Provision over the next 5 10 years. My school for example, we are using our Core Budget to pay for our own Counselling Service because there is virtually nothing outside so parents quite rightly have expectations. I am using around £40,000 of my normal budget which should be for things like english and maths and the like to provide these extra services because when we look around, it is not available to us elsewhere. I want to come back to that because the whole of the mental Health Area is very important. Natalie, is there anything your institute has found in research that amounts to best practice in this area . Is there evidence on which we could draw to know what might help because the pandemic might be a new experience globally but lots of countries have crises in delivering education where there are wars, natural disasters, on an annual basis or some places just have to deal with these things like geography, one thinks of the outback in australia, other things we could draw on . There is a lot of evidence but the main thing we need to focus on is how we can use the best evidence of what works to improve young peoples education, particularly to close the gap between the most disadvantaged and the rest. Even before the pandemic, that gap was already widening so, jules is correct, we need a longer Term Plan, the ambition cannot be Tojust Go back to pre pandemic levels of Education Attainment and equality because that was not good enough and it was declining. We know by international standards, the government has invested significantly lower amounts in per Pupil Funding in education for recovery. It amounts to £310 per pupil in england whereas in countries like the usa and the netherlands, it isjust under or over £2000 per pupil so we are talking about a very big difference. Let us move on to talk about something raised byjules, the question of Mental Health. Research commissioned by the nhs suggests one in six children of School Age has a problem with their Mental Health, up from one in nine four years ago. The statistic which shocked me the most in preparing for this Programme Isnt that one. Its that england has just 59 mental Health Support teams to cover all its schools and colleges. That figure is due to rise the government said to 400 by april 2023, so another 18 months away. Given the scale of the problems that this crisis has caused perhaps but exposed in other ways, No One would pretend 59 is adequate to provide schools with support. In the absence of that, what do they have . What they have is whatjules has done, he is not unique, many schools have just had to make their own provision. They can get support staff, who they train to get counselling skills. But the training they need in terms of Mental Health and physical health in terms of many pupils is very distressing to schools and also the scale of the need is huge. In an average class of 30, nine children will be living below the official poverty level, they are more likely to have Mental Health Problems and be undernourished, they are more likely to come to school with emotional problems because of the stresses and strains that they live with with their family. They are least likely to be able to learn at home. We have seen over the last ten years funding for local authorities cut by nearly half so the services asjules said, if you look out they are not there, both for childrens physical health, emotional health and social health, have gone, they have been decimated. The youth clubs, childrens centres, they have been halved. A lot of work is notjust done in School Settings . It cannot be done just in School Settings. The problem is when School Leaders look around them for all the Support Services that were there 15 years ago, because of austerity they are no longer there. Nhs research says one in six young people might have Mental Health Problems, up from one in 9. That was in 2017. These are rough figures. We are talking about individuals and we cannot treat them as one group. There are additional health pressures. Then we have special educational needs to talk about but in terms of those figures, how does the Support Network that is available Supplement And Support that in schools . What do schools have from the research you have done that provides them with some kind of infrastructure . It really varies from school to school. There is no national offer. What is a good example . Where would you say that is a School Or Area of the country where they have got it right or are moving towards getting it right . So i think it cannotjust be down to the school but in the ideal school, you would have at least one or two trained Mental Health practitioners who are able to work with young people. The school itself would offer an array of Well Being and pastoral and socialisation activities for young people. But actually one of the bigger problems is that where young people do have significant Mental Health disorder, we have found that about a quarter of them are being turned away from specialist mental Health Support because there just is not the capacity. So as well as making sure there is more specialist services that we do not see a quarter of young people being turned away, we are also calling on the government to accelerate its programme of providing specialist mental Health Support in schools but that requires more money and that money to go to schools faster than it is at the moment. From where you sit, running a secondary school, what have you seen and how have you tried to manage it . We talked about shifting some of the money into counselling resources, some of us remember schools used to have someone responsible for Pastoral Care but many School Pupils never accessed it, presumably that is a role which still exists, how do you manage that . It is an absolutely fundamental role and i think parents will recognise roles like pastoral leaders of the year, support assistance, these people support young people in their everyday lives and there is more Specialist Provision where we liaise with external services. We have significant duties around safeguarding so i have to use my resources really wisely and it always seems like it is a question of Robbing Peter to play paul. I want to have excellent provision for english and maths and the arts and extracurricular activities but i also have things we have just spoken about. Some childrens lives are blighted by their home circumstances, there are challenging areas of their lives. We see and hear about young people who experience difficulties around illegal substances, County Lines and criminal behaviours. All of these things end up on the doorstep of schools. We have increasingly and certainly during my headship, we have become the Focal Point of support and as other services, probably through lack of funding and resources have fallen away in terms of their capacity, we have had to fill in those gaps because children and pupils arrive in our School Day in, day out, increasingly i see parents and carers looking to schools and colleagues to offer that support. In a perfect world, i would like to see schools become community hubs. You spoke to natalie about a way forward, i would like to see that type of mental Health Provision that type of specialist support around speech and language, care around self harm, careers provision, making sure young people are fit for the workplace as well. I think schools should be open 24 7 but that cannot mean just me and my team. Care around self harm, careers provision, making sure young people are fit for the workplace as well. I think schools should be open 24 7 but that cannot mean just me and my team. Indeed. It cannotjust mean a Geography Teacher who through the goodness of their own heart tries to be a mentor and offers support. That is not sustainable. It is not trying to denigrate some of the external services, theyre very good but overstretched. Can i ask you about the external services, have you had access to a mental Health Support team and if so what do you get . Not at all in my own local authority, they are working really hard but there is not the level of resource to provide us with the services we need. We see in all walks of life, we see social care teams and Social Workers completely overstretched. Probably every teacher in the country if you talk about children and Mental Health services will raise their eyebrows and say they are not fit for purpose, even children who are most vulnerable face a 6 12 month Waiting List and that is so hard on young people and on the families themselves. We need to address that. Nobody expects it to be a Magic Wand but there will be issues that are long term solutions because we need to train people as well as have the money to provide for them. Let us use the last few minutes on this programme to look at two things. Remote learning and exams. Let me put this to you, mary, first. This is a quote from the government, from the recent News Release on the subject. Exams will always be the fairest way to assess students. Are they right . Exams are really important as part of the Balance Method of assessing students but on their own, they are not always the fairest way. The government keeps saying that but has no evidence. It is although the exam is absolutely perfect. We know that two years ago the Exams Regulator did a piece of research on an English Literature paper. They got experienced examiners to mark it. 40 of them gave it a different grade. So the idea that exams are the fairest and best way, they are the fairest and best way for some areas of knowledge but not all of them. We need to have a wider method of assessment for our children and young people which would also help their Mental Health. Just on that question, one is Mental Health, the other is what we have learned from covid and the pandemic. We managed without exams to all intents and purposes, certainly exams we had been used to, why did we gain and what did we lose . Because it was done so badly by the government, exams are going to happen, going to happen then didnt happen. They did not leave enough time for schools to moderate the result so we lost any good moderation between schools. That was a big loss and did not need to happen. What we gained is teachers regained experience in assessing the work of pupils for qualification. It was not a good experience because they were given it to late the way it happened but in the end, i have No Doubt we will move away from this exams for everything. We had an outlier across the world in doing that and we will move away. You are in an unenviable position because you the face of education services for the parents you serve, do you think we could without exams . I think we should not adopt a Binary Position as has been said. I think exams can play an important role in understanding and assessing development of children, how well they do and we must make sure we do not have rampant grade inflation, we dont want grades to become meaningless but they should be part of a suite of Assessment Programmes that really prepare young people for the future. I do not think any of us go into our daily lives simply sit a test without looking at any research materials. We use google, we use online materials, we analyse data and interpret things and we need to make sure we use those skills. We have to think about the fact that young people are being geared up, in My School in 2019, we had young people sitting 20 gcses in 21 days which is a crazy way forward. Gcses were established in the time when kids left school at 16. Yes. That has changed. Absolutely. We need to have a broader suite of examinations and whilst the fundamentals around numeracy and literacy, nobody is going to argue about those, we must be ambitious about those things but also we need children who have great interpersonal skills, great communication skills, who can reason and talk and communicate and actually look after each other. We want young people leaving school with all the skills in becoming adults and solve the massive crises that we often see. So they can pick up the pieces of their Education System we are leaving them with now. A last thought, remote learning. We are still a long way away from the kind of infrastructure yes, we made great strides in a system of getting schools connected with pupils at home. That is a huge testament to School Leaders out there who have been working hard on this but we were clear that we cannot replace the quality of teachers in the classroom. The infrastructure we have built could be used in cases like extreme Weather Conditions which we see a lot of in this country, for children who are off sick with a long Term Illness or mobility issues. I can see what we are learning from online and Increase Connecctivity should be put to good use in those cases. Thank you all very much forjoining us, there is lot more we could have talked about but at least you have got us all thinking about the experience of the last 18 months and the impact on schools and colleges. And for all of you who have been studying despite all the hassles and pressures, thank you very much for persisting, it will be worth it in the end. From all of us, goodbye. Hello. Saturday brought a return to drier, brighter weather across much of the uk with skies like this. With the exception of the Heavy Rain In Northern Scotland, similar day to come on sunday for much of the uk. Minus the Heavy Rain In Northern Scotland with the addition of rain moving into wales from this Weather System approaching from the southwest. It will be Turning Wetter here as the day goes on. A warm welcome Bbc News im mark lobel. Our top stories. 0h, say can you see. 20 years on from 9 11, america remembers all those it loved and lost in the deadly terror attacks. 20 years feels like an eternity, but yet it still feels like yesterday. Until we meet again, my love, rest in peace. Six moments of silence are held marking the exact time when the planes crashed and the buildings collapsed. President biden travels to all three sites where the attacks took place new york, pennsylvania and the pentagon. 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