National Tutoring Programme: Disadvantaged
(asked on 11th May 2021) - View Source
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the National Tutoring Programme targets financially disadvantaged pupils.
The National Tutoring Programme (NTP) is currently available for schools during the 2020-21 academic year. Schools can access tuition support from approved Tuition Partners. For further information, schools can visit the NTP website: https://nationaltutoring.org.uk/.
The NTP is a key part of the government’s COVID-19 catch-up response and provides additional, targeted tuition support to disadvantaged children and young people who have been hardest hit from disruption to their education as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Our delivery partner, the Education Endowment Foundation, has provided a guide to schools to ensure that they can make the most of the provision: https://nationaltutoring.org.uk/resources.
The programme is intended to support disadvantaged children who are eligible for pupil premium funding, but we recognise that the COVID-19 outbreak has affected many children's lives in many ways and there are different indicators of disadvantage to take into consideration. That is why teachers and head teachers have the flexibility to exercise their professional judgement to identify the pupils most likely to benefit from additional support. In addition to the support offered by Tuition Partners, we have placed over 1,000 Academic Mentors directly into some of our most disadvantaged schools to provide in-house tuition.
The Tuition Partners offer a good blend of national and regional providers that can offer support to schools across all regions in England. The programme ensures that support has been particularly targeted to regions with the largest numbers of disadvantaged pupils and in regions where access to tutoring has historically been low.
We continue to engage directly with head teachers, local networks of schools and national stakeholders to ensure that NTP support reaches as many disadvantaged pupils as possible.