Is the £1.4bn education catch-up package simply too small?

Is the new funding pledge undersized, as critics claim, or would it really have been a poor use of public money for the Treasury to approve a larger package? Ben Chu investigates

Some other developed countries seem to be spending much more (PA)

The education department has announced £1.4bn of additional funding for tuition for children whose schooling has been disrupted by lockdowns over the past year.

It says that sum, spread over three years, will pay for 100 million hours of free-at-the-point-of-use tuition and will be targeted at disadvantaged pupils.

“The package will not just go a long way to boost children’s learning in the wake of the disruption caused by the pandemic but also help bring back down the attainment gap that we’ve been working to eradicate,” says the education secretary Gavin Williamson.