Scaling up the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) to help pupils catch up on learning loss has been described as a “challenge” by the leader of the organisation leading its delivery.

Becky Francis, chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, the charity commissioned by the DfE to roll out the NTP, said it had been a “challenge” to scale up the programme and ensure “supply” reached the pupils who needed it.

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Speaking on the BBC’s World at One, Professor Francis said “scale has been really ambitious to achieve from scratch in a year”, after hearing reports that one mother had sold off personal belongings to pay for private tuition, having never heard of the scheme.

“Scale has been really ambitious to achieve from scratch in a year, but we know this is of course only one of many efforts needed to tackle the widening gap between socially disadvantaged kids and their peers,” Professor Francis said.

Asked why the programme is “only reaching 150,000” pupils a year after it had been set up, she admitted that “trying to achieve that scale and really stimulate supply has been a key challenge”.

Professor Francis also appeared to suggest that if a particular pupil was not receiving tutoring support from the NTP, that was “down to” schools’ choices.

When asked if it was down to the school that [a pupil] is not getting tutoring via the NTP, she said: “Yeah, schools have the choice about which kids are most affected by the pandemic and will most benefit from the tutoring offer.”

However, she later said she didn’t want to “blame individual schools”.

“I don’t want to blame individual schools, especially when I don’t know the circumstances behind this, but one of our challenges this year has been that schools in some parts of the country were previously unable to access high-quality tutoring.

Professor Francis said that schools had the choice to select which of their pupils would most benefit from the NTP, and that if the mother’s school asked the NTP for a tutor, “the intention” would be to provide one.

“Certainly that’s the intention, and that’s the way we’ve set up the scheme. We have 33 tuition partners, which are provider tuition organisations reaching different parts of the country,” she said.

“So we’ve addressed that by again this rigorous assessment process, ensuring that providers can reach different parts of the country, and then setting regional targets for providers. And that’s provided real success, we’re really proud that we’re reaching every region in England.

“We did want schools to have the flexibility to decide which pupils receive support because it’s teachers who know their students best, and the evidence does suggest that this is the best approach,” she added.

The NTP has been seeing slow take-up in some regions, with a survey by the Schools North East network finding that 81 per cent of heads had not used the scheme.

And in March, a report from the National Audit Office found that fewer than half of the pupils who had started to receive tuition so far were from low-income families eligible for pupil premium funding.

The NAO report found that of the 125,200 children allocated a tutoring place by February, 41,100 had started to receive tuition - of whom 44 per cent were eligible for pupil premium funding.

In April, schools minister Nick Gibb said that while the number of children enrolled on the scheme had risen to 196,000, there were 93,000 (47 per cent) who had “commenced” tutoring, meaning that more than half of the pupils enrolled were yet to start their sessions.

Asked about the low take-up of the NTP, Professor Francis said: “We’re currently reaching 44 per cent of pupils that are eligible for pupil premium funding, and then 17 per cent are also classed as [having] special educational needs.

“Now we know that many pupils have become disadvantaged during the last year, and aren’t yet recognised as pupil premium eligible,” she added.

“Teachers know their kids’ best situations during the year of the pandemic, which is why they have the flexibility to decide which children will benefit most from tutoring.”

The NTP has said it is on track to deliver tuition to 250,000 pupils by July. Asked whether this would be too late for pupils taking GCSEs and A levels, Professor Francis said the scheme “is a much wider offer, we’re not just engaging students in exam years - this is going right across the board”.

Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said that the NTP “must do better” and that tuition was reaching schools with a historic relationship with tuition companies in wealthier areas, rather than schools serving disadvantaged communities.

Dr Bousted said the funds should be given directly to schools to employ tutors who would work alongside teachers and “know” the pupils.

Asked whether schools should be given tutors directly by the NTP, and perhaps use this to extend the teaching time of their staff, Professor Francis said: “Yeah, and that is of course perfectly possible for schools to do at the moment, through the wider government catch-up funding. We’re trying all the time…to balance issues around high quality and certified high quality with flexibility for schools.”