The national tutoring programme (NTP) was heralded by Boris Johnson as the government’s great education leveller after the mass school closures of the Covid pandemic. I was one of the policy’s most vocal champions and even helped create the toolkit that so powerfully backed its use. But unsurprisingly, it turned out to be a little more complicated than the former PM’s rhetoric made out.
This is one of the biggest education experiments ever conducted in England’s schools, and the long-awaited evaluation of its rapid roll-out is essential reading for all who still believe targeted tuition can be a powerful equalising force for poorer pupils. The NFER report reveals nothing if not just how difficult that ambition is, even for the best-evidenced bets.
