One million tuition courses started through National Tutoring Programme

MORE than one million tuition courses have been started through the Government’s flagship National Tutoring Programme, data reveals.

But most of the courses have been started under the schools-led route, rather than through the controversial tuition partners route run by Randstad, which has been criticised for being “dysfunctional” and bureaucratic to use.

The National Tutoring Programme is a scheme intended to provide additional, targeted support for pupils in primary and secondary schools in England who have been most affected by disruption to th eir education due to Covid-19 restrictions.

Just over 100,000 courses had been started through the partners route, compared with over half a million under the schools-led tuition pillar.

The Department for Education estimated 1,031,000 courses had been started by pupils as of February 27 this year.

In total, 311,000 starts were made by pupils in the 2020-21 academic year, while 720,000 courses overall had been started in 2021-22.

Provisional data showed just over half a million courses had been started through the school-led pillar of the programme on February 9 2022, which equated to around 457,000 pupils as some pupils had had more than 15 hours’ worth of tuition.

The Government suggested around one in six of the pupils who have started tutoring had received more than one 15-hour course of sessions.

For the tuition partners route, run by Dutch company Randstad, only 114,000 courses had been started by pupils in the 2021-22 academic year, and this may include duplication of some pupils. Randstad has been criticised by school leaders for the bureaucracy of its booking system, with heads saying the system is “dysfunctional”.

A report from the Commons Education Select Committee said the Government must assess the success of the National Tutoring Programme under Randstad, and that if the company cannot deliver the scheme effectively, it must be “booted out”.

It said the Government’s flagship National Tutoring Programme appears to be “failing the most disadvantaged”, with the scheme reaching 100 per cent of its target number of schools in south-west England by March 2021, but only reaching 58.8% of target schools in the north east.