The Department for Education must ensure that it is identifying and addressing “cold spots” in its flagship catch-up programme, according to a new expert report published today.
In its policy paper National Tutoring Programme: The missing middle, social mobility charity Impetus says that it is currently “nobody’s responsibility” to investigate these gaps in provision, which could be geographical, subject or year group “cold spots”.
And it says that addressing these gaps would require engagement with groups including school leaders’ unions, and making “clear and consistent” data available through the National Tutoring Programme (NTP).
“Detailed information about which local authority areas, which subjects and which year groups are benefitting from the various elements of the NTP offer is essential,” the report says.
But it also calls for further data beyond these headline statistics to be released, including attendance data, which Tes has campaigned for the DfE to release in the past.
National Tutoring Programme: fears of catch-up ‘cold spots’
On engagement, Impetus states: “One part of reaching young people from disadvantaged backgrounds is to identify gaps in provision - such as geographical cold spots - and work with local stakeholders, contractors and tuition partners to address them.”
Ben Gadsby, head of policy and research at Impetus, and author of the report, told Tes that there was “no current mechanism for picking up what tutoring schools would be buying if it was available”.
He said that, for example, if some schools had Year 8 French high on their lists of tutoring priorities but none were getting access to that support, “we’d have no way of knowing that”.
The DfE does release some data on NTP take-up, including the number of starts on the programme, and plans to release a controversial “league table” of schools’ take-up this autumn.
The issue of geographical cold spots has been flagged up regarding the NTP before - with research from Schools North East in early 2021 showing that schools in the region were snubbing the programme. More recent data suggests that school engagement with the scheme has improved since then.
Tes revealed last month that several providers on the NTP had written to the education secretary calling for “urgent” action - including bigger subsidies for schools - to ensure that the “original focus” of the programme is not lost.
A DfE spokesperson said: “The National Tutoring Programme has revolutionised the way targeted support is provided for the children and young people who need it the most.
“Over two million courses have started through the programme, including in areas with high proportions of children in receipt of pupil premium funding, with Yorkshire & the Humber and the North West having the highest proportion of schools using the programme last year.
“This year we have simplified the programme to provide funding directly to schools, and have appointed three new delivery partners to ensure that pupils continue to have access to high-quality tuition.”
