“Urgent” action - including bigger subsidies for schools - is needed to ensure that the “original focus” of the government’s flagship catch-up programme is not lost, tutoring organisations told the education secretary today.

In a letter sent to Kit Malthouse and seen by Tes, 14 organisations involved in the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) warn they have “serious concerns” that the NTP risks widening the attainment gap.

They write: “As a collective, we have serious concerns that if the NTP does not aim to specifically reach those from disadvantaged backgrounds, for whom it was originally intended, and if the interventions provided are not impactful, it actually could stand to widen the attainment gap, which would surely be a travesty.”

The signatories, including leaders of charities, social enterprises and private companies, as well as several accredited providers on the programme, say the brand of the programme has been “damaged by the complexity” and “mismanagement” last year, under the management of Randstad.

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• Related: Randstad says schools lack “bandwidth” to sign up to NTP

In a series of demands, they call for the Department for Education to:

• Reinstate targets around pupil premium participation.
• Commission a high-quality evaluation of the NTP.
• Commit to increasing the subsidy level given to schools next year.
• Provide at least an additional year of NTP funding in 2024-25.
• Appoint a respected body to lead large-scale engagement with the teaching profession to persuade schools to take up tutoring.

They warn that “urgent action is needed to alleviate the pressure on school budgets and to ensure sufficient investment is made in tutoring for 2023-24 and beyond”.

Fears over the National Tutoring Programme

They also say that the danger of NTP funding being used to cover teaching assistant costs “has become more prevalent since the NTP rules changed to allow tutoring to take place in groups of 1:6 rather than 1:3”.

However, “high-quality tuition is still unavailable in many parts of the country”, they add.

The authors of the letter “commend” the government for introducing the programme and add: “We are committed to supporting the government to ensure that the NTP is a successful, game-changing programme and enjoys a positive legacy once the subsidies end in summer 2024.”

The subsidy for the NTP - the proportion of the costs that schools have covered for them - is due to drop from 60 per cent this year to 25 per cent next academic year, before ending the following summer.

At the moment, schools are facing an array of financial pressures, including high energy costs and rising salary bills - and some have warned this could get worse next year.

Back in March the DfE announced that £349 million of tutoring cash would go directly to schools from the next academic year.

This was in a bid to “simplify” the system after the DfE finally decided to end its contract with Dutch consultancy firm Randstad, which had struggled to meet targets.

Three new contracts were introduced as part of the changes.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Over two million courses have started through the National Tutoring Programme, including in areas with high proportions of children in receipt of pupil premium funding, and it’s schools who continue to be best placed to decide which pupils are most in need of that extra support.

“We have simplified the programme this year to make it even easier for schools to access funding, while our Schools White Paper sets out a clear roadmap for levelling up education in England - including targeted support both for individual pupils who fall behind and whole areas of the country where standards are weakest.”

Read the full letter, along with the list of named signatories, below.