Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to expand the capacity of the National Tutoring Programme.

In summer 2020, as part of the initial £1 billion COVID-19 catch-up package, we announced the £350 million National Tutoring Programme (NTP) to help tackle the impact of lost teaching time. As schools continue to face unprecedented challenges, the NTP has been designed to help ease the burden on teachers and school leaders and support them in helping those pupils who have missed out the most.

To date, since its launch in November 2020, over 155,000 pupils and 4,000 schools have enrolled for tuition support with the NTP Tuition Partners. Over 20,000 tutors are now supporting pupils across England and our aim is to provide tuition to over 250,000 pupils this academic year. This is in addition to placing over 1,000 Academic Mentors in our most disadvantaged schools to provide tuition to pupils that need the most help to catch-up.

The NTP 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 Tuition Partners offer a good blend of national and regional providers, which can offer support to schools across all regions in England.

We are extending the programme further to provide tuition in the next academic year. This will help us continue to deliver high quality tutoring, which will benefit even more disadvantaged pupils. In February 2021, the government announced a further allocation of £83 million to assist in expanding the 2021/22 programme. The new funding enables the NTP to reach hundreds of thousands more disadvantaged pupils in the next academic year. We are currently undertaking a procurement process for a delivery partner for next year’s programme.