Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the (a) economic impact and (b) effectiveness of private tuition funded by the national tutoring programme; and what information her Department holds on the potential impact of this funding on tuition in (i) mathematics and (ii) English.

The department is investing over £1 billion in tutoring via its flagship National Tutoring Programme. This has seen nearly five million tutoring courses commence since the programme started in November 2020, including over two million in each of the last two academic years. Primary, secondary and special schools are continuing to offer tutoring, with 346,000 courses having started in the first five weeks of the current academic year.

There is extensive evidence that tutoring is one of the most effective ways to accelerate academic progress. The Education Endowment Foundation has found that, on average, pupils who receive small group tutoring may make four months additional progress. The department’s external evaluation of year two of the National Tutoring Programme, carried out by the National Foundation for Educational Research, shows that School Led Tutoring has had a positive impact on pupil attainment at both Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 4.