No child should have their prospects "blighted" by the pandemic, the education secretary has said.
Gavin Williamson was speaking at a Downing Street briefing as he set out £700m in funding to help pupils in England catch up on missed learning.
Asked about what would replace exam grades this year, he said they were "putting trust" in teachers.
It comes as the number of people to receive one dose of the vaccine in the UK surpassed 18 million.
A further 9,938 coronavirus cases were recorded across the UK on Wednesday, as well as 442 deaths within 28 days of a positive test, according to government figures. It takes the death toll by that measure to 121,747.
Mr Williamson said the funding announcements were about offering "immediate" support for children and schools.
The government's £700m education support package for England includes:
- A one-off £302m "recovery premium" for state primary and secondary schools to boost summer schooling, clubs and activities
- £200m to fund face-to-face secondary summer schools, with teachers in charge of deciding which pupils benefit
- An expanded national tutoring programme for primary and secondary pupils and an extended tuition fund for 16 to 19-year-olds - also worth £200m
- That includes £18m funding to support early-years language development
But the education secretary said many children would need longer term support, and "extensive work" was under way on plans for that.
He said: "We're going to make sure we do everything can do to make sure children reach their potential - while looking at all issues - and we're not going to be timid in aspirations for them and the actions we need to take."
He also reiterated that there would be "no algorithms whatsoever" used in determining A-level, AS and GCSE grades, with marks "firmly in the hands of teachers".
It has already been announced that exams will not take place, but Mr Williamson said he will set out further details on Thursday for how students in England will be graded this year.
The challenge for the education secretary is to keep sounding as though he has a new plan for what everyone can see is a massive problem with no obvious easy answers.
Children have missed a huge amount of school and exams have been cancelled for two years running.
The latest announcement on catch-up has an extra £400m, but it's focused on a familiar check list - summer schools, tuition, after-school activities, much of which happens anyway and with schools deciding how it will be spent.
Gavin Williamson told Wednesday's press conference that the government was "not going to be timid", but the reports about radical plans such as longer school days and shorter holidays seem to have fizzled away.
The unshowy and highly-experienced school recovery tsar, Sir Kevan Collins, will be more interested in long-term results than show-boating headlines.
The education secretary ran through the plans for pupils going back to school - from 8 March with testing and masks - and that date offers families some certainty.
Although university students must think they are being kept in an expensive limbo, with no date yet set for when many of them can return.
Asked if the government was looking at lengthening the school day in the future, Mr Williamson said it was not part of the immediate plans announced, but it could be something considered as part of a wider consultation being led by Education Recovery Commissioner Sir Kevin Collins into the longer term support and change needed within schools following the pandemic.
Deputy chief medical officer for England Jenny Harries said more testing in secondary schools would mean that parents, teachers and grandparents could be reassured that schools would be as safe as they could be.
These measures would have a positive impact on breaking the chains of transmission, she said.
But she warned that "children should not go hugging grandparents too much" before the the impact of the vaccine rollout was felt.
Impact of lost learning 'baked in'
Labour's shadow education secretary, Kate Green, said the government should put forward a "long-term plan... not just a quick-fix over the summer" to help children catch up with missed education during the pandemic.
She added that the impact of lost learning for children was now "baked in" and was sceptical about whether the catch-up tutoring programme would reach many of the children who needed it most.
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2021-02-24 18:49:48Z
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