SCHOOLS in England need up to £15 billion in extra funding if children are to catch up on learning missed through Covid-19, according to a leading education think tank.

The government has made £1.7 billion in catch-up funding available, but analysis by the Educational Policy Institute published today says that up to 10 times that sum needs to be invested  over the next three years.

Without “massive policy interventions,” there could be severe consequences for young people’s education, earnings and life chances, it says, with individual lifetime earnings losses of between £8,000 and £50,000 — between £60 billion and £420bn across England’s eight million pupils.