Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 22 June 2021 to Question 18546 on the National Tutoring Programme, of the 173,000 children who have commenced tutoring, how many were located in (a) the South East, (b) the South West, (c) London, (d) East of England, (e) East Midlands, (f) West Midlands, (g) Yorkshire and Humber, (h) the North West and (i) the North East.

The National Tutoring Programme (NTP) provides additional, targeted support to disadvantaged pupils by providing schools with access to high quality, subsidised tuition from a selection of approved Tuition Partners.

Since its launch in November 2020, over 234,000 pupils have been enrolled to receive tutoring and over 26,000 tutors are available to support schools. Of those enrolled, over 186,000 pupils have already commenced tutoring. We are on track to meet our ambition to support 250,000 pupils this academic year. The programme ensures that additional support has been allocated to regions with the largest numbers of disadvantaged pupils and in regions where access to tutoring has historically been lower. The Department does not have information on the regional split of the 186,000 pupils who have received tutoring.

The NTP is led by demand by schools, and we have undertaken a range of activities with schools, to ensure maximum awareness within the sector and encourage schools to sign up to the programme. We are engaging directly with school leaders, local networks of schools and national stakeholders to ensure that NTP support reaches as many disadvantaged pupils as possible. We will continue focusing on those areas with the most disadvantaged pupils, and where we would like to see more schools take up the opportunity.

Building on the successful first year of the programme, we aim to reach 750,000 disadvantaged pupils during the academic year 2021/22.