Schools Options for the National Tutor Programme Narrow

Schools will only be allowed to hire tutoring organisations pre-approved by the Department for Education under the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) from this September.

Guidance issued by the department in July revealed the change to funding conditions for the school-led tutoring route. The DfE announced earlier this year that £349 million in tutoring funding will be handed directly to schools from September to decide how to spend.

Up until now schools using the NTP through the school-led route were allowed to use any private tutoring organisation they wanted. In that the previous guidance only stipulated that leaders to use their “professional judgment” and checks providers could “meet the needs of their pupils”. But from September, using an external organisation to provide tutors will now be covered by the same rules as the tuition partners route.

Under this pathway, schools are only allowed to spend their funding on “quality assured” external organisations that are listed on the DfE’s new Find a Tuition Partner service. When approached for comment by the professional teachers website – Schools Week, the DfE said schools could still hire external organisations, but only if they were on its list of accredited providers.

Ben Gadsby, head of policy and research at youth charity Impetus, welcomed the move, describing it as closing a “loophole that enabled potentially sub-standard tuition through the net”. He told Schools Week “But we need more high quality accredited tuition partners. The government should fund a capability building programme as part of the National Tutoring Programme, to support those organisations that fall short of the quality standards to improve their practice,” he added. “This will help ensure that every school has access to the high quality tuition their pupils need.” n