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England’s catch-up tuition 90% below enrolment target Randstad, the Dutch multinational company responsible for delivering the government’s flagship National Tutoring Programme, is under mounting pressure after claims that pupil enrolment for subsidised tuition is more than 90% below target
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Ps on the cross-party education committee were told that the recruitment business, which was controversially awarded the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) contact in June, has enrolled just five per cent of the target number of pupils for the 2021-22 academic year. Talks are being held to set up a new, not-for-profit, consortium of education charities which could take over the running of the NTP from September 2022. A meeting is due to take place with the education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, to discuss options. A committee was told that 28,000 pupils - out of an end-of-year target of 524,000 - had so far been enrolled, even though schools were almost a third of the way through the year. The Department for Education (DfE) said that the figure was out of date, and has since increased, while the TES reported that just eight per cent of the target had started tuition. Randstad was awarded the contract to run the programme in June after it submitted a £25m bid - which was considerably lower than rival bids, and far below the £62m maximum suggested by government. Asked if it was proving value for money Nick Bent, the chief executive of the Tutor Trust - one of the partners providing tutoring in schools - told the committee, “I’m afraid all the evidence we’ve seen so far about Randstad’s performance in delivering this contract suggests this is a massive false economy, and that the previous secretary of state [Gavin Williamson] made a mistake in awarding this contract to Randstad. “The question is whether the new secretary of state will do anything about that. It seems very clear to us, the frontline delivery organisations with the NTP, that Randstad just simply has not got the capacity, or the competence, to deliver this programme effectively.
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March 2022
