Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will take steps with the Education Endowment Foundation to help ensure that none of the National Tutoring Programme volunteer tutors are unpaid interns.

The National Tutoring Programme, worth £350 million, was recently announced as part of a £1 billion COVID-19 “catch-up” package to directly tackle the impact of lost teaching time and will increase access to high-quality tuition for the most disadvantaged young people.

We will be working closely with the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to identify high quality tutoring organisations and support them to ramp up their recruitment of tutors.

The EEF will select high-quality tutoring organisations that meet agreed criteria. These organisations will have differing models - some may use volunteers to deliver tutoring sessions to pupils, while others will pay tutors. Dedicated coaches that are based in schools will all receive a salary.