Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much and what proportion of the funding for subsidised tuition under the National Tutoring Programme has been taken up by schools.

In summer 2020, the Department announced a £1 billion catch-up package to help tackle the effect of lost teaching time as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, including a £350 million National Tutoring Programme (NTP) for disadvantaged pupils.

The NTP for 5 to 16 year olds has two pillars:

• Schools can access high quality, subsidised tuition support from approved Tuition Partners.
• Schools in the most disadvantaged areas have been supported to employ in-house Academic Mentors to provide tuition to their pupils.

Schools have not directly received funding to access the NTP. Through approved Tuition Partners, they will have access to high quality tuition, with the cost to schools subsidised by 75%. The core salary for Academic Mentors employed through the NTP will also be covered by the Department (£19,000 pro-rata). Schools are free to use additional catch-up funding to pay the remaining cost of both NTP Partners and Academic Mentors should they wish to do so.

Since the launch of the programme in November 2020, over 240,000 pupils have been enrolled to receive tutoring across over 5,000 schools. Of those enrolled, over 195,000 have already commenced tutoring.