The secretary of state for education appears to be confused about the purpose of schools and his department.

Rather than focusing the energies of the department on supporting schools with children’s education, his aim appears to be focusing the energies of schools on making him and his department look better - and blaming headteachers for his shortcomings.

After the failure of his predecessor to get but a fraction of the £14 billion recommended to support Covid recovery, the department has managed to make it so difficult for schools to use the little money that is available that Nadhim Zahawi is now resorting to bullying school leaders to achieve the headlines he needs.

A disaster from the start

The National Tutoring Programme (NTP) has been a disaster from the off and so, at the last minute, he shifted funding - and responsibility - away from the company that made the profit and on to schools.

It could have been so simple; it makes it hard to imagine how we’ve ended up in this mess. Yet, at every stage, the department has created barriers.

It was inevitable that some schools wouldn’t be able to use the school-led tutoring funds. For schools with tight budgets and existing deficits, finding the 25 per cent of costs that were unfunded was impossible.

Not that Mr Zahawi mentions that, of course. Instead his press release peddles the claim that funding was provided for every disadvantaged pupil - not the 75 per cent funding for the three-quarters of pupil premium pupils that has actually been offered.

For some schools, low pupil premium numbers mean the funding was negligible anyway. The administrative hurdles make a grant of a few hundred pounds cost schools more in admin than they’d get back in cash.

Add in the short notice at each stage, the constant tweaks to eligibility and the challenges of recruiting tutors - not to mention the mismanaged contract with Randstad - and it’s no wonder than some schools haven’t bothered with the underfunded programme, particularly given the other challenges of school leadership over the past year.

Where the focus should be

A secretary of state whose priority was getting support to children affected by the pandemic might try to make things easier for schools. Simple changes could enable schools to offer more tuition.

For example, removing the requirement to spend at least £18 per hour to get £13.50 of funding, removing the requirement to send experienced teaching assistants on lengthy courses and allowing schools to carry funding into September - meaning schools could invest appropriately in tuition (particularly given the fact that schools still don’t know exactly how much money they’ll have to spend, with just weeks left of the term) - might have been helpful.

But Mr Zahawi has offered none of these amendments to help schools help students. He’s not interested in why schools aren’t accessing the money or how he could have better supported them and their pupils. Instead, he offers bullying phone calls and the threat of Ofsted.

This isn’t a department using the press to highlight its success in education; instead we have a minister prioritising PR over purpose.

He has no interest in the success of the programme, only in the appearance of success for the department. And schools and their students - including those with the greatest need to catch up - are simply collateral damage.

Michael Tidd is headteacher at East Preston Junior School, in West Sussex