The National Tutoring Programme (NTP) aims to support schools in providing a sustained response to the coronavirus pandemic and to provide a longer-term contribution to closing the attainment gap.

The programme has been created through a collaboration between Nesta, Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), Sutton Trust, and Impetus with support from the Department for Education. Additional support has been generously provided by KPMG Foundation, Bain & Company, and Freshfields. The NTP aims to fulfil its mission by delivering a programme with two pillars:

• Through NTP Tuition Partners, schools can access subsidised high-quality tuition from an approved list of providers on the NTP website. The Education Endowment Foundation will be leading the delivery of this part of the programme and has been provided with funding from the Department for Education to fund activity in 2020 – 2021.
• Through NTP Academic Mentors, trained graduates are employed by schools in the most disadvantaged areas to provide intensive support to their pupils. Teach First are supporting the recruitment, training and placement of the first cohort of Academic Mentors. The salaries of Academic Mentors will be funded by the Government.

Both pillars are funded as part of Government’s £350 million allocation to tutoring, through the £1 billion coronavirus catch up package. Further information about catch-up funding, including for early years settings and post-16 providers, is provided on the Department for Education website.

The charities have also set up a steering group to help support and co-ordinate the Tuition Partners and Academic Mentors pillars of the NTP and to ensure that the NTP has a positive legacy in the schools system.

NTP Tuition Partners ran an open call to select organisations to deliver tutoring. This funding round closed 18 September 2020. The list of approved tutoring providers is now available on the NTP website for schools to use to identify their preferred provider(s).

Despite the considerable efforts of schools to support remote learning over the past months, many pupils will have fallen significantly behind in their learning. These pupils are more likely to be drawn from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds meaning the gap in attainment between this group and their classmates could almost certainly have widened.

There is extensive, high-quality evidence, as demonstrated in the Sutton Trust-EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit, to show that one-to-one and small-group tuition, delivered in partnership with schools, is an effective way to support pupils who are falling behind. However, access to tutoring is often limited to the schools and parents that can most afford it. It’s estimated that around 80 per cent of disadvantaged pupils currently don’t have access to quality tuition. The NTP aims to give schools the resources they need to address this challenge.

Schools can find out more about both pillars of the NTP on their website.

Interested in becoming a tutor or mentor, or finding out more about the programme? You can sign up for updates here.