Some schools have been given extra time to contest government plans to clawback cash earmarked for running National Tutoring Programme sessions, after communications with heads fell down this week.
Last week, schools were sent an email about their school-led tutoring grant funding from last year containing information about whether any of their funding would be recovered due to it not being used.
But the Department for Education has now said that some of the emails failed to arrive because of the school changing its email address domain, or because of staff unsubscribing from previous ESFA correspondence.
Schools that wanted to query the clawback were initially told to contact the ESFA by Monday afternoon (5 December) according to emails seen by Tes, but those that did not get the email will now have until 10am next Thursday (8 December) to respond.
Leaders at schools had to fill in a year-end statement outlining how they used school-led tutoring money in 2021-22 earlier this year, and the DfE said any unused cash would be recovered.
But the ESFA said last week that schools would get an email informing them whether any of their school-led tutoring grant funding would be recovered based on the data they had been sent, and outlining instructions for how to challenge this if heads thought the decision was incorrect.
Schools were told the email would go to both the head of organisation and the member of staff who submitted the year-end statement.
Last month, Tes revealed that 850 schools were set to have all of their school-led tutoring funding clawed back after not completing the year-end statement.
The ESFA is due to recover the cash by offsetting against schools’ and local authority payments in December and January.
But the 850 schools should have received last week’s email as well, with this being their chance to challenge the planned cash recovery and submit the form if they did use their allocation.
Some heads didn’t receive tutoring email
Some heads complained on social media that nobody at their school had received any correspondence, despite being forewarned that it would come.
Michael Tidd, headteacher at East Preston Junior School in West Sussex, said he did not receive the email last week, and took to Twitter to run a poll asking other heads if they had faced the same experience.
Of over 300 votes, around a third said they had not been sent the form - though some said they had later found it in junk or spam folders.
Mr Tidd told Tes he had later chased the ESFA and had now received the information in the email directly from them.
Others who have received the email have reported having significantly more cash clawed back than they expected.
One headteacher wrote on social media that they were “100 per cent convinced” they had spent all their allocation yet were having £1,100 clawed back.
Another who was also getting £1,100 clawed back said they had “spent hours” working out figures and had “no idea” where they had gone wrong.
Nick Brook, deputy general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, urged schools ”to contact the DfE immediately”.
“We would expect honest mistakes to be put right quickly, with the minimum of fuss”, he added.
A DfE spokesperson said: “We have provided schools with over £1 billion to help them to embed tutoring into the school day and settings can also use Pupil Premium funding to support pupils on the programme. Thanks to the hard work of teachers and tutors, over two million courses have now started.
“We have been clear from the outset that any funding not used for school-led tutoring or used incorrectly will be recovered. We are supporting schools with this process and have provided clear information on how schools that have concerns can contact the DfE.”
The DfE also urged school leaders with questions to contact tutoring.support@service.education.gov.uk.
Schools face issues accessing NTP this year
Earlier this month, Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), wrote to schools minister Nick Gibb warning him that catch-up cash allocated to schools for the current academic year would go “unspent” unless rules were changed so that schools no longer had to subsidise tutoring sessions from their own budgets.
But the schools minister has backed the existing subsidy policy in a written response to the union.
Currently, government NTP funding can be used to pay for 60 per cent of the total cost incurred by a school to deliver catch-up tutoring.
Mainstream schools are subject to a maximum hourly per-pupil rate of £18 - meaning they can claim £10.80 from the DfE. For non-mainstream schools, the rate is £47, enabling them to claim back £28.20.
But ASCL and others have suggested schools be allowed to use their full allocation - still ring-fenced for tutoring - without having to top up the remaining 40 per cent.
