The UK government’s flagship scheme designed to help school pupils in England catch up on learning disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic will “wither and die” because of poor funding, education groups have warned.
The Department for Education created the National Tutoring Programme in November 2020 as part of a £3.5bn effort to help children recoup classroom hours that were lost to school closures at the peak of the health crisis.
The initiative also aimed to embed tutoring in the education system and make it permanently available to children from all backgrounds by subsidising small catch-up classes in state primary and secondary schools.
But headteachers say they are already struggling to afford tutoring sessions and will have to abandon them when the subsidy tapers off next year. At present, the government funds 60 per cent of the cost of a tutoring programme for each pupil; that will fall to 25 per cent from September.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, which represents headteachers, said the programme was “pretty much fighting for its life”. He added: “I think we will see that it will wither and die.”
