The next government should nearly double the annual funding for tutoring in schools to offer a “Tutoring Guarantee” for every disadvantaged child who needs it, a coalition of charities, tuition providers and cross-party politicians has said.
The group is calling for political parties to have a manifesto commitment to pay for a scheme that will embed tutoring in schools long term.
It wants tutoring to be funded to the tune of £290 million a year for the duration of the next four-year Parliament and comes as money for the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) is due to end in August 2024.
They also want a continuation of the £95 million a year set aside for the 16 to 19 tuition fund.
The group making this call includes children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza, Commons Education Select Committee chair and former schools minister Robin Walker, former education secretary Lord Blunkett and Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Munira Wilson.
The coalition, led by charities Impetus, Action Tutoring, The Tutor Trust and Get Further, are calling for tutoring to be funded over the next Parliament to narrow the widening attainment gap and support young people’s declining mental health.
From September this year, schools will have to stump up 50 per cent of the cost of tutoring.
The group are calling for schools to have the flexibility to offer tutoring to non-pupil premium children who may need it, scrap the need for schools to contribute financially and create a “mixed economy” using external providers and in-school support.
Pupil premium children who need it will be guaranteed 12 hours of tutoring in English and maths.
The need for schools to “match fund” the NTP has always proved to be a stumbling block for the programme, with figures earlier this year showing around a third of schools were not using the subsidies.
Dame Rachel said: ”Tutoring is an intervention that is proven to help children catch up on lost learning and also supports their wider needs, like improving attendance and protecting mental health.”
Mr Walker said that tutoring needed to be embedded into the “education landscape” in order to close the attainment gap.
Details of the coalition’s demands are included in a new report - funded by eight tuition providers - that also outlines research into the views of parents, pupils and teachers around tutoring.
It says that the NTP has faced “significant operational challenges” but a period of greater stability would allow for it to deliver the impact required in the future.
The report, The Future of Tutoring, produced by consultancy Public First, says that more than three-quarters of parents would support increasing tuition provision in England, and a similar proportion think the government should pay for it for the poorest children.
As well as improvements to academic performance, parents also reported a number of “spillover benefits” to tutoring, with 85 per cent saying it had positively impacted their child’s confidence and 68 per cent of parents saying it had improved attendance.
Among teachers, 43 per cent said it had had a positive impact. They also reported that it had increased engagement in the classroom and reduced pupil anxiety.
Teachers did highlight, however, the workload burden of managing tutoring in their schools, especially dealing with external providers.
In its guidance for schools on the NTP, the Department for Education says it wants tutoring in schools to continue “into the long term”.
“We are also considering how we can support the delivery of this long-term ambition,” it says.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan was due to speak at a parliamentary reception today celebrating the third anniversary of the NTP.
