The Government’s “clear intention” is to have all children back in schools across England by September, according to a minister.

It comes after Prime Minister Boris Johnson revealed a £1 billion plan to help pupils catch up on schoolwork they have missed during the coronavirus lockdown.

Speaking on Sky News, schools standards minister Nick Gibb said the Government wants to ensure that no pupils face any long-term detriment to their education as a result of the pandemic.

He said: “Schools have done a brilliant job in providing online lessons for children, providing them work while they’re at home.

We’re working on other contingency plans but the clear intention is that we’ll have all children back in school in September

“But nothing beats children being back in the classroom in terms of the quality of the education and we want to make sure that no child loses out, has any long-term detriment to their education as a consequence of this crisis.

“So that’s why we’re allocating this huge sum of money, £650 million to schools to use at their discretion, to ensure that every child can catch up over the course of the next academic year.”

Mr Gibb added: “We’re led, of course, by the science and the medical advice, there are over a million children now in our schools and we are taking every step in a cautious way.

“We are working with the school sector, we’re taking advice and we give schools plenty of notice in time to plan for that reopening in September.

“Of course, we’re working on other contingency plans but the clear intention is that we’ll have all children back in school in September.”

Mr Gibb also said the funding made available for schools will begin to be distributed from the start of the academic year.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, he said: “The money will start to be paid in the academic year starting in September.

“Schools will know it’s coming and they will be able to budget on that basis if they want to do things before September.

“But the money will start being distributed to schools, we’ll have more to say about that shortly, from the next academic year, September.”

Mr Gibb also confirmed that headteachers will have the discretion to decide on how the catch-up funding is spent.

He said: “Ultimately it will be the headteacher (who decides), we give discretion to schools.

“But there’s a lot of advice from the Education Endowment Foundation that’s being published as well, setting out a whole menu of options that they know from their research are the most effective ways of helping children to catch up with their education.

“One of those things on the menu is one-to-one tuition or small-group tuition and so on, just to make sure that children who have lost out during their period of home catch up.”