“Schools have moved heaven and earth to support children in catching up with lost learning from the pandemic but as these results show this has not been an easy task, and in terms of maths that is likely to be because missing key elements of numeracy at an early stage make later progress much more difficult. This analysis makes it even more frustrating that the government not only failed to provide sufficient investment in education recovery in the first place but is now pulling the plug on the national tutoring programme – which was its flagship recovery programme. It is abundantly clear that there needs to be continued investment in education recovery and there is a strong case for continued investment in a tutoring programme as a permanent feature of the education system as a means of narrowing the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers. Unfortunately, the government has decided that it is a case of job done when this is very clearly not the case at all.”