There is an urgent need to increase the subsidy that schools can use to pay for tutoring sessions as part of the Department for Education’s flagship catch-up scheme, according to a government-funded charity.
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), which the government called “world-class” in its Schools White Paper earlier this year, has said that it would like to see the subsidy on the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) rise to 75 per cent.
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, but the EEF has said that raising this proportion ”would allow more schools to access tutoring for more of their socio-economically disadvantaged pupils”.
The EEF’s call comes weeks after the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) warned that many schools “simply cannot afford” to cover 40 per cent of the cost of tutoring sessions, in a letter to the new schools minister Nick Gibb.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the ASCL, called for schools to no longer have to cover any of the costs, in the letter.
Fears over the National Tutoring Programme
Alongside launching a guide to support school leaders to implement tutoring effectively, the EEF said: ”The challenge of closing the socio-economic attainment gap means there is an urgent need to make sure that as many disadvantaged pupils as possible have access to tutoring through the National Tutoring Programme.
“We would like to see the government increase the current subsidy levels to 75 per cent, which would allow more schools to access tutoring for more of their socio-economically disadvantaged pupils.”
Last year schools using the school-led tutoring grant could claim the cost of 75 per cent of tuition from the DfE. This then dropped to 60 per cent this year and will fall further to just 25 per cent next academic year.
And this comes at a time when schools are facing a range of financial pressures, including rising energy bills and higher staffing costs.
The EEF’s guide, launched today, gives guidance on how to select pupils for tutoring, schedule sessions, align tutoring with curriculum, and create “sustainable” tutoring models.
It comes after an independent report by Ofsted said that tutoring was “haphazard and poorly planned” in some settings.
Speaking about the new guide, Professor Becky Francis, chief executive of the EEF, said: “The research is clear - done well, and aligned to high-quality teaching, tutoring can be hugely successful in accelerating progress for struggling learners.
“It is also one of the best-evidenced interventions we have to support socio-economically disadvantaged pupils’ attainment”.
In a letter to Kit Malthouse, when he was education secretary, earlier this term, providers on the NTP warned that “urgent” action - including bigger subsidies for schools - was needed to ensure that the “original focus” of the government’s flagship catch-up programme was not lost.
The 14 organisations warned they had “serious concerns” that the NTP risked widening the attainment gap, rather than closing it.
A DfE spokesperson has previously said: “Over 2 million tutoring courses have been started through the National Tutoring Programme since it began, including almost 1.8 million across 80 per cent of schools last year.
“We are clear that 100 per cent of schools should be delivering the National Tutoring Programme, as government works with schools to help children catch up from lost learning in the pandemic.
“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.”
