Announcements in the Autumn Budget that £1.8 billion will be diverted into funding Covid catch-up and tutoring sessions for the nation’s pupils have been described as a ‘climb-down’ for Rishi Sunak. The Chancellor had previously stated that government spending on schools was ‘maxed out’, despite sector insistence that an ambitious cash injection into the education system was the only way to get our young learners back on track after nearly two years of unprecedented disruption.

While the newly-earmarked £1.8 billion is certainly a concession on Sunak’s part, it is by no means the saving grace educators have clamoured for. This latest round of proposed spending brings the total spent on education recovery across the pandemic to £5 billion, still only a third of the £15 billion required for an effective response effort according to former education recovery commissioner Kevan Collins.

Collins’ resignation earlier this year was one of the most high-profile indicators that this Tory government is unabashedly ambivalent towards radical interventions that could not only repair the damage done to children’s education over the course of the pandemic but also revolutionise the ways in which schools can serve as spaces of holistic support and personal growth for young people.

Proposals put forward by Collins, and backed by a wide range of independent education organisations, were far-reaching and diverse. Longer school days, greater emphasis on creative arts and sport, and more robust mental health and pastoral support were at the forefront of Collins’ action plan. If not perfect, it was certainly a far bolder vision that the one opted for by a Department for Education then headed by Gavin Williamson, whose ineffective, misguided and reactionary strategies suggested a contempt for the country’s youth lay at the core of his motivations.

Williamson’s vision, now inherited by Nadhim Zahawi, has always been blinkered. A focus on small-group and one-to-one tutoring provision is no bad thing, especially for economically disadvantaged and working-class children whose access to this service is severely limited—if not non-existent—compared to those from more affluent backgrounds. However, the DfE’s strategy is almost entirely centred on this single intervention, a result of Boris Johnson’s obsessive insistence that tutoring is a catch-all solution for all the disruptive ills wrought on pupils through nearly two years of intermittent school closures and disruptions to learning and assessments.

Sunak’s latest announcement doubles down on this single-solution approach, despite the fact that the Education Policy Institute’s October 2021 recovery report reiterates Collins’ call for a multi-pronged, well-invested response.

From an academic standpoint, tutoring is inarguably one of the most effective interventions to consolidate and build on pupils’ in-class learning, as well as to cultivate soft skills and confidence that are vital for navigating the working world. Studies show that just seven hours of tutoring can enable a child to progress by half an academic grade across a school year—especially important for disadvantaged pupils whose learning progress has slipped more than 18 months behind their better-off peers over the course of the pandemic.

This widening disparity led to the creation of the government’s National Tutoring Programme, which is now in its second year. The framework serves as an intermediary linking schools with independent tutoring providers—both charities and private companies—while its funding serves to subsidise the cost of these services. However, this flagship measure from the government needs careful, critical scrutiny from the Left to ensure its effectiveness and fair operation.

Initially overseen in-house, the programme’s running has now been handed over to Dutch HR conglomerate Randstad for a three-year tender in a characteristic display of Tory outsourcing to the private sector. The giant immediately signed up its own education wing as one of the programme’s approved providers, and disputes over a contract stipulation that would have allowed Randstad to confiscate tutors and staff from any terminated providers have only just reached a resolution.

A number of NTP providers are charities with a tutor base made up of volunteers and, though others are private companies with paid tutors, the total operation is still in principle a public service. Therefore, it is vital that the interests of its service users—namely disadvantaged children—remain at their heart of its operations, rather than those of private capital.

Other announcements from Sunak reach beyond the government’s immediate response to the pandemic and look ahead to the future of schooling in this country. His pledge to restore per-pupil funding to levels not seen since the Cameron administration’s 2010 cuts will see £4.7 billion spent up to the 2024-25 academic year. This move, noble on the face of it, is out of balance—a significant overhaul of how funding is allocated will see a 1.2 percent drop in per-pupil funding for schools in the most deprived areas of the country versus a 2.9 percent bump for those in the most affluent.

Pupil Premium, additional per-pupil funding for individual children whose household income falls below a set threshold, is supposed to counteract funding imbalances such as this. The Commons public accounts committee has already forewarned that the adjustments reiterated in Sunak’s budget represent a £90 million drop in funding for state schools with the heaviest Pupil Premium representation.

This flattening of the funding structure, regardless of the demographic variations in schools across the country, underscores the Tories’ warped understanding of its own preoccupation with ‘fairness’ in schools and a ‘levelling-up’ of the education sector at large. The appointment of ‘Britain’s strictest headteacher’ Katherine Birbalsingh—who proudly described her own school as ‘the Alcatraz of the world of education’—as social mobility commissioner further points to the government’s hard-line, prescriptive, one-size-fits-all approach to intervening on issues affecting the poorest children.

Putting it in terms the Tories can understand, each child who leaves school without the necessary qualifications to enter work costs the economy £120,000 over the course of their lifetime. Seeing as poor and working-class children are the most in danger of this, and that danger has only been intensified by Covid, there is no question that the government’s energy, resources and money should be focused on them most of all. Sunak’s budget shows the vaguest notions of concern and attention, but is little more than an indicator that his government’s priority is to get back to business as usual as quickly as possible, rather than the take the opportunity to reinvent a long-dysfunctional wheel.

Business as usual is not enough. Redressing societal inequality at the earliest, most foundational stages of life requires effort and ambition. Not ambition for political dominance nor the accumulation of wealth, but ambition for the wellbeing, security and prospects for our most vulnerable young people. Over the course of the pandemic, the Tories have been tested time and again on their investment in the futures of all young people from every background, yet every time they have had the chance to excel they have instead settled for a passing grade. It’s time to rip up the exam sheet and start again.