Ministers are being warned that it would be a “national travesty” to cut tutoring after reports that there will be no future funding for the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) in the Spring Budget.
School leaders’ unions have said many schools currently using the NTP to help their pupils catch up will no longer be able to afford to if reports that chancellor Jeremy Hunt will not extend funding beyond this academic year in the Spring Budget prove to be correct.
“It is deeply frustrating that, having established a tutoring programme that is now finally working reasonably effectively, the government clearly no longer views it as worthwhile,” said Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL).
The NTP was originally set up as a four-year scheme, ending with the 2023-24 academic year.
The Department for Education has previously said it will continue to provide funding for tutoring through pupil premium allocations.
However, there have been repeated calls throughout the sector to extend the subsidy for the programme to help schools continue with it.
Nick Brook, chair of the DfE’s tutoring advisory group and CEO of Speakers for Schools, told Tes that it will be an “absolute tragedy” if the funding does not continue “just as it is starting to prove its worth”.
“If [the NTP] is reliant on schools to fund it solely through pupil premium then it is likely the amount of tutoring that takes place will fall off a cliff because there are so many demands on that money,” he added.
Lee Elliot Major, a professor social mobility at the University of Exeter, said: “Failure to fund extra tutoring of children in the forthcoming Budget will be a national travesty, condemning generations of children to worsening education and life prospects in the wake of the pandemic.”
Tutoring under threat
Benedicte Yue Vincent, chief financial officer at River Learning Trust, said the tutoring subsidy and the recovery premium represented around 1.2 per cent of the trust’s income this year.
She said that without this funding it would be “very challenging”. “This is another pot of funding disappearing in a context of acute financial pressures and at a time when the disadvantage gap is wider than ever,” she added.
Research from both Ofsted and the National Foundation for Educational Research shows that while school leaders reported that tutoring was having a positive impact, most also said it would not be financially possible to continue with it once it was no longer subsidised.
A survey by the Confederation of School Trusts (CST) shows that trusts were already having to cut tutoring this year after the government subsidy decreased.
The subsidy for the NTP has gradually reduced in value, from 75 per cent in the scheme’s first year in 2020-21 to 50 per cent this year.
James Bowen, assistant general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said: “We should be very clear about what this means - it would mean a reduction in the amount of funding going to schools for pupils with the greatest needs.”
At key stage 4, the disadvantage gap is currently the widest it has been in over a decade - it had been narrowing pre-pandemic.
Steve Rollett, deputy chief executive of the CST, pointed out that the government said in May it would explore ways to continue tutoring long-term. He added: “If it is serious about delivering on this ambition, it must continue to fund tutoring.”
The impact of the NTP
Analysis by consultancy Public First estimates that the NTP would eventually lead to 390,000 grade improvements in English and maths across two years of the scheme.
An analysis of the second year of the programme shows that the tutoring helped pupils make a small amount of progress when led by schools.
Susannah Hardyman, chief executive of Action Tutoring, said it would be “naive” to think that schools could use pupil premium funding to pay for tutoring.
She added that “we now face a situation of all of that valuable infrastructure being undone and tutoring returning to being the preserve of the wealthy”.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Education standards have risen sharply across the country since 2010, with 89 per cent of schools now rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted, up from just 68 per cent, and our children are now the best readers in the Western world.
“We are providing significant support for children in the most disadvantaged areas of the country, including through the National Tutoring Programme, alongside record levels of pupil premium funding and increased support for English and maths in preparation for the Advanced British Standard, which will create a world-class education system.”
