Around a third of schools in England have not yet used catch-up funding aimed at helping pupils recover lost learning so far this year following the disruption caused by the Covid pandemic, the latest government data reveals.
And less than half of courses funded by the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) have been started by disadvantaged pupils, according to the Department for Education figures published today.
Schools minister Nick Gibb has said he hopes ”every eligible school will take advantage of the scheme this term” as exam season approaches.
But headteachers’ leaders have warned that a reduction in the government subsidy for the programme risks it being cut or abandoned by schools in the future.
Last year the government was urged to raise this year’s subsidy that it provides to schools to ensure that more disadvantaged pupils could benefit from the catch-up support.
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) said there was an “urgent need” for the subsidy the DfE provides to schools to fund tutoring to rise from 60 per cent to 75 per cent this year to tackle the widening attainment gap between pupils on free school meals and their peers.
The call came after the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) wrote to Mr Gibb to push for the requirement for schools to make up the remaining 40 per cent of tutoring costs to be scrapped, warning that otherwise funding would go unspent because heads “simply cannot afford” to cover their portion of the costs.
Catch-up funding: calls to raise tutoring subsidy
In figures published today, the DfE estimates that 65.7 per cent of schools overall have used NTP funding to provide catch-up tutoring to pupils so far this year, based on data provided in the the spring 2023 census, which covers the school year from 1 September 2022 up to and including 19 January 2023.
The DfE estimates that at least 839,495 starts had been made on course by pupils by mid-January in the current academic year. However, this figure includes multiple starts made by individual pupils.
This is an estimated increase of 440,556 starts since the beginning of October last year, when the previous census was carried out, the DfE said.
The majority of courses were started by primary school pupils, according to the DfE data, which estimates that 59.2 per cent of pupils beginning catch-up courses were in a primary setting.
Just under half of courses were started by pupils on free school meals (49.8 per cent), based on data collected in October 2022.
Mr Gibb said today that ”millions of children have benefited” from the NTP.
“With exam season approaching, I hope that every eligible school will take advantage of the scheme this term to provide pupils who need additional help with one-to-one or small group tuition,” he added.
The DfE said it will ”continue to support schools to embed tutoring into the long term as an integral part of the department’s strategy to raise standards in primary and secondary schools.
“This includes the ambitious target for 90 per cent of pupils to meet the expected standard of reading, writing and maths by the time they leave primary school. ”
‘De facto league table’ criticised by heads
The government has also revealed that 87.4 per cent of schools took part in the National Tutoring Programme last year, in full data published on participation in the programme, which includes school-level data showing each individual school’s uptake.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the ASCL, called the decision to publish a “de facto league table” as “meaningless” and said it added “insult to injury”, after the DfE refused to scrap the requirement for schools to top-up NTP funding by 40 per cent this year.
He said: “The Department for Education’s claim that they will continue to support schools to embed tutoring into the long term just does not tally with reality.
“The NTP is fundamentally flawed as it is only partially subsidised and schools have to fund the remainder of the cost out of budgets that are already stretched beyond breaking point. The government subsidy covers only 60 per cent of the cost this academic year, 25 per cent next academic year and disappears altogether after that.
“This will only serve to limit access, with many schools likely to cut or completely abandon NTP provision. If the government’s intention really is to embed tutoring into the school system, this is a bizarre way of going about it.”
Regarding the school-level figures, Mr Barton added: “This de facto league table, that we have repeatedly warned them against publishing, tells us little more than what schools have been able to afford. It certainly should not be used as major indicator of a school’s appetite to make use of the tutoring scheme.
”If the government was serious about widening participation in the NTP, they would allow schools to access the subsided funding without the prerequisite of topping this up from their own budgets. Rather than take this simple, cost-free step, they have instead chosen to publish this meaningless set of statistics.”
