Extra tuition designed to help children in England catch up on learning lost during the Covid pandemic was often “haphazard and poorly planned”, and in some cases disrupted the school day, an independent review by Ofsted inspectors has found.
The Ofsted review said that while the tutoring given through the government’s national tutoring programme (NTP) was “strong” in just over half of the 63 schools visited, “the quality of tuition varied greatly depending on the school or provider, and most teachers did not know the extent to which tutoring was having an impact”.
Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector of schools in England, said: “The government’s tutoring programme is potentially an important part of helping pupils catch up after the pandemic. There is evidence of tuition working effectively, but most schools and colleges lack a system to assess it properly and so do not know if that’s the case.”
