The National Tutoring Programme (NTP) was introduced to help disadvantaged children catch up on learning after the pandemic. Covid-19 has wreaked havoc in the system with the partial closure of schools, the hasty introduction of remote learning, and pupil and teacher absences rife ever since.
Our evaluation of the first year of the Government’s flagship education recovery programme found that those who had more tutoring from external tutors through the Tuition Partners programme achieved better scores in English in primary schools, and better grades for maths and English (teacher assessed grades) in Year 11. So, success then? To some extent, yes.
The Government, through the Education Endowment Foundation, spent £80m quickly in the 2020/21 school year on delivering an intervention which, when implemented properly, has indeed helped pupils who received it. In addition, despite a constant stream of press stories reporting dissatisfaction with the scheme, 80 per cent of school leads were either ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ satisfied with the programme in its first year. Yet our evaluation found it difficult to detect differences between those schools participating in the NTP and those which did not.
