A group of charities is in “serious talks” about potentially taking over the running of the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) from Randstad next year, MPs were told today.

Nick Bent, chief executive of the Tutor Trust and one of the tuition partners involved in the scheme, told the Education Select Committee that the awarding of the contract to Randstad had not represented value for money, as it lacked the “capacity” to deliver the scheme. 

Committee chair Robert Halfon said there had been a suggestion that Randstad was awarded a £25 million contract to run the NTP despite the fact that the maximum contract offered by the Department for Education in the tendering was £62 million. He asked whether the saving was “value for money”.

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Mr Bent replied: “I’m afraid that all the evidence we’ve seen so far about Randstad’s performance in delivering this contract suggests that it is a massive false economy and that the previous secretary of state [Gavin Williamson] made a mistake in awarding this contract to Randstad.

“The question now is whether the new secretary of state will do anything about that,” he added, saying that Nadhim Zahawi had “shown himself willing to listen” and would be meeting with a group of tuition partners to discuss concerns about the scheme in the new year.

Mr Bent said: “It seems very clear to us who are the frontline delivery organisations for the NTP that Randstad just simply hasn’t got the capacity or the competence to deliver this programme effectively”.

He added that the company was now “trying desperately to rectify that” but that there was “a huge question mark about whether it’s right for Randstad to continue running this programme for the full three years”.

He noted that the DfE had a break clause in the contract following the first and second year of its delivery.

“Our day-to-day experience of working with them is that they simply don’t have enough staff or the right expertise,” Mr Bent said.

“There are huge problems with the technology hub that is meant to organise all of the tutoring, and some of us are still refusing to use that tuition hub because it’s so dysfunctional. There’s not enough marketing to schools, there’s a lack of communication.”

“We’re going to be meeting with the secretary of state on 19 January to talk through issues and solutions but there is serious talk going on at the moment about co-creating a new organisation, a not-for-profit entity that could potentially take over the running of the NTP from 1 September 2022,” he said.

The Fair Education Alliance (FEA) had agreed to “host conversations about an alternative not-for-profit provider to potentially take on the running of the whole NTP” from September next year, Mr Bent said.

He added: “And there are charities like Tutor Trust, Action Tutoring, Literacy Pirates, CoachBright, Equal Education and others who are willing to work with the secretary of state to devise a potential alternative solution.”

This morning, Tes reported that just 8 per cent of the 524,000 pupils due to be tutored this year have actually accessed tutoring so far. 

Tuition partners told Tes that they were frustrated with Randstad’s delivery, especially when using their own resources to help schools navigate the online tutoring hub.

Randstad and the DfE have been contacted for comment.