Schools minister Robin Walker faced a series of questions from the Commons Education Select Committee today (15 March) about the National Tutoring Programme (NTP).
His appearance at the committee follows last week’s critical report by MPs into the Covid recovery programme and controversy over the take-up of sessions led by tuition partners.
Here are five highlights from today’s committee meeting:
1. The DfE can’t say exactly how many disadvantaged pupils are being helped by the NTP
Mr Walker was asked by committee chair Robert Halfon when the government will publish figures showing how many disadvantaged pupils are being reached by the NTP.
The minister told the committee that the department was working on publishing new figures for this month and said it wanted to ensure this would include a regional breakdown.
He also said this will include an indication of the number of pupils on pupil premium.
However, he added: “The one complexity with that is, at the moment, through the schools-led route, the money is allocated according to pupil premium cohorts, but we are giving the schools the flexibility to determine who they then use that funding with.
“And there’s not necessarily a direct line of reporting that I’m aware of that requires them to tell us how many of those pupils are pupil premium.
“So I can’t guarantee to you that every element of the detail will be there.”
2. NTP take up figures labelled ‘misleading’
The minister was also scrutinised over recently published data on the NTP.
Last week, education secretary Nadhim Zahawi told the Association of School and College Leaders conference that a million courses have been started by children across the country through the NTP.
Mr Halfon said this was welcome, but told the committee that there were “caveats”.
He said: “So 311,000 of these starts were made in the previous academic year when the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) was leading the rollout of the NTP and, in total, only 720,000 starts have been made under this academic year.”
He added that Randstad - the firm running the second year of the NTP - had said that one in six pupils are enrolled on multiple courses.
Mr Halfon warned that the figures published last week only show the number of starts, and questioned Mr Walker on why there was double counting of pupils.
The minister said that it was right for schools to have discretion over which pupils need catch-up support, and added that it “may well be” that a pupil needs sessions in both literacy and numeracy.
Mr Halfon replied: “I don’t have a problem with that but the issue is about the data,” adding: “The big thing is that the data is quite misleading in the way that it has been set out.”
Mr Walker said that the government had always aimed to set a target for the number of courses started by individual pupils.
3. DfE will look at ‘all options’ on Randstad contract
Mr Halfon also questioned whether the government was willing to break its contract with Randstad over the delivery of the NTP - something he has called on the DfE to do.
He said: “If Randstad’s deliver doesn’t improve, will the Department for Education revoke the contract or invoke, I should say, the break clause on the contract.”
Mr Walker replied: “We will look at all the options to make sure we have the most effective delivery in the next year of the programme.
“But, of course, what we need to do in the meantime is to work with Randstad and work with tuition partners to make sure that the best offer is there for schools and we need to continue working directly with schools who have told us that they believe that they can use a significant proportion to deliver tuition.”
4. Warning over NTP effect on teacher supply
Labour MP Ian Mearns asked the minister about the impact that the tuition rollout has had on school staffing during the Covid pandemic.
He said: “In some parts of the country, if you are trying to recruit tutors, but at the same time you are also trying to recruit supply teachers because during Covid lots and lots of staff have been off, we are fishing in the same pond quite often.”
Mr Walker replied: “I recognise that issue and I have looked into this in some detail. It’s not the case that everyone involved in tutoring needs to be a fully qualified teacher so there is a quite substantial lack of overlap in terms of the people in that space, but, of course, it is the case in any situation where, if you have a tight market, it’s more difficult to recruit people.”
Mr Walker also said it was important that the government had helped to triple the number of tuition partners in the North East - where Mr Mearns’ Gateshead constituency is based.
5. Covid absence blamed for tuition take-up
Mr Walker told MPs on the committee that the uptake of the NTP through the tuition partners route could have been hit by staff absence because of Covid.
He said: “I recognise that, particularly during the first half of this term, many schools were probably under too much pressure from staff absence in order to be able to engage with a programme like this to the extent we might like them to have done.”
Earlier this year, Karen Guthrie, NTP director at Randstad, told the committee that some schools may not be accessing the NTP because they lacked the “bandwidth” due to Covid.
