Schools face being forced to spend millions of pounds of catch-up tutoring cash by August or hand it back, despite the bulk of the funding - £150 million - only being paid out by the government today, headteachers’ leaders have warned.
The cash arrived in schools’ accounts just four months ahead of the deadline to spend it.
Multiple emails sent to headteachers from the Department for Education (DfE) in the past few weeks have warned that funding not used would have to be returned to the government.
An email, sent earlier this month, said the government would “encourage” schools to access tuition ”to provide support to pupils over the summer term and through July and August”.
A further update, sent this morning, said that the final school-led tutoring instalment (£150 million) - including an extra 16 per cent increase - would be paid today (Friday 29 April) for local authority-maintained schools, and Monday 9 May for academies.
It added that headteachers should “use their funding as soon as possible”.
But leaders have said it was “ridiculous” for the government to claw back any unspent cash in August because extra catch-up tutoring cash has only been transferred to schools two-thirds of the way through the academic year, after DfE data showed the tuition partners’ strand of the National Tutoring Programme was not meeting its targets.
Last month, the education secretary announced that the government would shift £65 million in catch-up cash to the school-led tuition route of the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) - which is run directly by schools - from the academic mentor and tuition partner pillars that are currently administered by external providers.
This has meant that mainstream schools received more than double the total amount of cash to deliver school-led catch-up this week - £150 million - compared with the £63 million allocated in the December and September payments.
Academies will receive their allocations the week after next, on May 9th.
The DfE said that the date for schools to utilise the enhanced school-led tutoring funding would be extended to the 31 August, and has encouraged them to organise summer schools to increase the period in which pupils can benefit from education recovery funding this year.
But Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) said that while schools would “appreciate” being told they could use catch-up cash to fund extra sessions over the summer break, the “reality” was that holiday commitments and a lack of desire among pupils to commit to summer classes “may present difficulties arranging extra sessions for those happy to go ahead”.
Ms McCulloch said that the government had taken “far too long to act” on allocating further funding to the school-led tuition route.
James Bowen, director of policy for school leaders’ union NAHT, said that “conflicting guidance and delays” in funding reaching schools had made it “incredibly difficult” to plan and deliver tutoring.
He said: “Given those delays, it is ridiculous that the government should now be talking about taking funding back from schools rather than allowing them the time to put a sustainable plan in place.
“Schools have to ensure that tutoring is high quality and effective; it’s not simply about hitting a target number of hours. Schools and pupils should not be penalised for the government’s failings. Ultimately, this approach will mean pupils losing out.”
He added: “Schools now have precious little time in which to make use of the extra funding and many may end up having to return some or all of it.”
Michael Tidd, a junior school headteacher in Sussex, echoed ASCL’s claims, conceding that while it was “sensible” to shift money to the school-led tutoring side of the NTP, he “couldn’t imagine many pupils being up for tuition over the holidays”.
He added: “I suspect it’s an optics problem. They need the money to be spent by the summer because that’s what they’d originally said would happen, and they can’t afford yet more bad news about the NTP - and a huge underspend would be bad news.”
The department said that the money could help with the transition from primary to secondary school and preparation for exams in the new academic year.
The DfE update to headteachers today also said that the education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, would write to all schools early next week to announce plans to “improve transparency” and help identify and support uptake among eligible schools yet to access tuition.
Last month, the DfE announced that £349 million of tutoring cash would go directly to schools from the next academic year, in a bid to “simplify” the system.
Low take-up in some areas
Just under 60 per cent of schools in England have participated in the NTP this academic year, according to DfE data from last month, with 53 per cent of those schools choosing the school-led tutoring route.
There have been varying rates of uptake across the country, though, with just 56.4 per cent participating in the South West, for example.
DfE data shows that less than half of schools have participated in school-led tutoring programmes in some local authority areas. For example, in Haringey, London, just 38 per cent of schools have participated, despite high levels of disadvantaged students, while just over a third (37 per cent) have used the school-led route in Portsmouth.
