Guidance on summer schools programme published

The Department for Education has published guidance on its summer schools programme, which is open to secondary schools.

The aim of the programme is to deliver a short summer school offering a blend of academic education and enrichment activities to help pupils catch up after the Covid-19 school closures.

The guidance says it is for schools to determine which pupils would most benefit from a summer school, but they expect that most will want to focus it on pupils making the transition into year 7.

The guidance says the DfE is able to provide funding to each school based on up to 50% of their year 7 cohort being offered a place on a two-week programme, or 100% of the cohort being offered a week-long programme. This funding equates to £597 per two-week place (£1,791 per place for pupils in special schools, special units within mainstream schools and alternative provision).

Each school’s own allocation will be published after the Easter holiday.

If summer schools have to be reduced in scale because of a direct local or national order from DfE or Government, schools would be eligible to claim a portion of the funding available to them in line with the scale of the summer school and the number of pupils for whom confirmed places were made available. If summer schools have to be cancelled because of a direct local or national order from DfE or Government, schools would be eligible to claim any reasonable accrued and unrecoverable costs.

Meals should be provided for pupils attending summer schools. Meals must be free of charge for any pupil who is eligible for free school meals and schools can use a proportion of the funding to ensure that is the case.

The guidance says that any teacher working in a summer school should be doing so voluntarily.