Can schools in England be said to be recovering – or starting to recover – from the impact of the pandemic? Disruption and absence due to Covid have reduced, and plans for this summer’s exams are in place, with some requirements reduced to take account of missed lessons. But the current attendance rate of about 90% at secondary schools is below the 95% which has long been Ofsted’s benchmark.

There is no formal record of the number of children being home-schooled in England. Last week the country’s children’s commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, called for improved data. Ministers have announced plans for a compulsory register of those being taught at home, but not when this would be set up. Without school lessons, children will suffer by missing out on the curriculum to which they are entitled. The pandemic has taken a toll on mental as well as physical health, and there are concerns that schools are not equipped to provide the support that pupils are seeking.

It is less than a year since the Covid recovery commissioner chosen by ministers, Sir Kevan Collins, resigned after the Treasury’s refusal to fund the £15bn schools catch-up package that he recommended. Following the much smaller increases agreed by Rishi Sunak, per-pupil spending has returned to roughly the pre-austerity level of 2009-10. Budgets for post-16 colleges are still 10% lower than they were under Labour. Earlier this month, MPs on the public accounts committee said children’s education was being eroded by financial pressures, triggering staff cuts and scaled-back curriculums, with local authority-run secondary schools among the worst hit.

Young people deserve better. The government’s handling of the pandemic’s impact on schools has been error-strewn as well as ungenerous. The knighthood handed to the former education secretary Gavin Williamson was patently absurd given his appalling record. Ministers’ choice of a multinational Dutch company Randstad to deliver a £1.5bn national tutoring programme has proved a poor one. So far the business has reached just 15% of the pupils it was supposed to help, and MPs said last week that the contract should be ended if the company doesn’t “shape up” quickly.

Schools are the organisations best placed to support children’s learning. Of course, oversight is important. But it is the Department for Education, rather than schools, that appears in need of challenge. Its altered national funding formula has exacerbated inequalities. Between 2017-18 and 2020-21, per-pupil funding fell by 1.2% in real terms in the 20% most deprived schools. In the least deprived 20%, it rose by 2.9%. While some academies have accumulated large reserves, MPs found, in 26 local authority areas more than 20% of schools are in deficit.

Prof Lee Elliot Major of the University of Exeter has described the chaos surrounding the tutoring programme as “a battle for the futures of a whole generation”. The Education Policy Institute has pointed to stark regional differences in the long-term impact of Covid upon life-chances. The education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, has been in post for six months. He has yet to set out the government’s strategy for mitigating the harm caused by two years of disrupted learning, and for avoiding a Conservative legacy of widening educational inequalities.