Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many National Tutoring Programme Academic Mentors they estimate will be working in schools from 2 November.

The National Tutoring Programme (NTP) is an ambitious scheme that will provide additional, targeted support for those children and young people who need the most help to catch-up. The NTP will spend up to £350 million to provide targeted support for children who have been hardest hit from disruption to their education as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. The NTP for 5-16 year olds will increase access to high-quality tuition for pupils this academic year. The programme has two pillars:

1) Approved Tuition Partners will offer high quality, subsidised tuition to schools.

2) Schools in the most disadvantaged areas will be supported to employ in-house Academic Mentors to provide tuition to their pupils.

Further information on both pillars can be found here: https://nationaltutoring.org.uk/faqs.

NTP Academic Mentors will be employed in schools to provide intensive and frequent support for those pupils who need it most. Academic Mentors will provide support tailored to their school, but most Academic Mentors will support subject-specific work (both one-to-one and in small-groups), revision lessons, and provide additional support for those shielding or not in school. Academic Mentors will be a part of their school’s staff team, supporting and managing them to deliver mentoring that is linked to the curriculum.

We expect the first cohort of tutors to be supporting schools from November, and we will be able to provide final numbers placed for this initial wave in due course. We plan to increase provision through the remainder of the autumn term and into the spring term.