Schools are still dealing with the day-to-day problems of Covid but the pandemic catch-up programme seems to have already been forgotten.

After Sir Kevan Collins’ original proposals were shelved last year there has been precious little offered to help pupils who have lost learning time.

The one thing that was announced - multiple times and with some fanfare - was the National Tutoring Programme (NTP).

This was a fantastic opportunity to embed one-to-one and small group tutoring - one of the best-evidenced educational interventions there is - into the English system.

Unfortunately, the NTP was set up in a rush and poorly designed, as is sadly typical of national programmes.

NTP procurement problems 

Two paths were created - one whereby schools could manage their own tutoring delivery and another whereby they could access tutors through the NTP.

The first route lacks any standardisation or quality control. The second was initially run by the Education Endowment Foundation, which struggled to manage a large delivery programme. It was not what it was set up to do.

By summer 2021 it was getting things into a better place. Many high-quality tutoring companies had signed up, and delivery was ramping up.

The Department for Education then decided to re-procure the NTP for the next three years and somehow designed a process that allowed a for-profit HR company called Randstad to win.

Quality not cost

Randstad undercut the competition by putting in a low-ball bid - just £25 million for central costs over three years - which was £37 million below the £62 million figure that was available.

Usually the DfE designs procurements so that most of the score is attached to quality rather than cost.

This allows it to pick the provider that will offer the best service rather than the cheapest one.

But in this case 40 per cent of the bid points were awarded on cost alone.

Randstad scraped over the quality threshold by a tiny margin but was so far ahead on cost that none of the higher quality bids could beat it.

I’ve spoken to multiple people involved in the process and they all confirm that ministers were very unhappy with the choice of Randstad.

I’m told that Gavin Williamson, who was then education secretary, banged a table in frustration, insisting that “we’re not giving this contract to a French company” (they are Dutch).

Powerless to act 

But ministers were powerless to change anything in the face of a procurement team who will always insist that the result of their process cannot be overturned without risk of a legal challenge from the organisations that lose out.

Re-running the whole process would have prevented the government from being able to offer the NTP at the start of this year, which would have been politically impossible, given that it was its only catch-up offer.

So the government was stuck with Randstad even though many warned it would not go well.

These concerns started to come true almost immediately. The set-up of the NTP’s second round immediately ran into problems with contract disputes.

Many of the most high-profile tutoring companies refused to sign up until these issues were resolved, leading to delays and, ultimately, five of the original providers withdrew.

The late start and poor management have meant that - a third of the way through the year - only 10 per cent of the target number of tutoring courses have started, and it has turned out that some of these were “ghost sessions” with young people who weren’t even turning up.

Many providers are still waiting for payment for courses that have been delivered.

One described Randstad’s administration to me as “bargain-basement delivery…which is undermining confidence…it’s unforgivable”.

All of this is a scandal.

The problem has already been picked up by the Commons Education Select Committee - to whom headtechers gave their insights on how hard it has been to make proper use of the programme - and I strongly suspect it will lead to a National Audit Office Inquiry.

Rethinking procurement 

But there is a broader question here.

How can it make sense to have a procurement system in place that leads to a result everyone knows will be bad but can’t be changed?

This is a familiar problem from my time in the DfE, where multiple programmes had to be delayed while we re-ran processes that got daft results the first time around.

It is, of course, necessary to have formal and transparent procurement processes.

Giving ministers the right to hand out multi-million-pound contracts as they wish leads to, at worst, outright corruption and, at best, bad governance.

But we also need processes that can be managed to avoid obviously bad outcomes.

For instance, you could have a final step where independent assessors decide if the chosen provider is capable of delivering the service based on a wider review of available evidence (the procurement team will only look at what bidders have written as part of the process).

At the very least, officials and advisers need to make sure they understand the terms under which future procurements are being run, so as to avoid a mistake of this nature happening again.

And ministers need to move quickly to take this contract off Randstad and try to resurrect the tutoring programme.

A lost opportunity of this magnitude would be a tragedy - especially when so little else is being offered to the students who’ve suffered through the Covid years.

Sam Freedman is a former senior policy adviser at the Department for Education and a senior fellow at the Institute of Government

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In response to the issues raised in this article, a spokesperson for Randstad told Tes: “Work continues at pace to close the gap on lost learning through the National Tutoring Programme, particularly for disadvantaged pupils.

“This includes ensuring good quality tutors are in place to provide high-quality support - all Tuition Providers accepted on to the NTP framework have successfully passed the robust quality, safeguarding and evaluation standards on the programme and offer a depth of expertise and experience to support schools.

“Over 300,000 courses have already been delivered through the programme this academic year. Our key goal is to continue working closely with all of our stakeholders to ensure we deliver an ambitious and high-quality programme at pace, for schools to help pupils whose education has been most impacted.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Education said: “Randstad has over 25 years of experience in the education sector, including working closely with schools, and already held a strong understanding of the National Tutoring Programme, having been selected by the Education Endowment Foundation as a provider in the programme’s first year. 

“Over 300,000 courses were delivered last term alone and the programme remains on track to deliver the ambitious target of 2 million courses this academic year, supporting children from all backgrounds to catch up on lost learning.”