Education Endowment Foundation

• A recent independent evaluation of the National Tutoring Programme has assessed the impact of the catch-up strategy in 2021-22, its second year.
• This follows a critical report delivered by the House of Commons education committee after the first year of the programme, which stated that it “appears to be failing the most disadvantaged”.
• Funding for the National Tutoring Programme is focused on schools with pupils qualifying for the pupil premium payment.
• The third approach, introduced by the government for the second year of the programme, is school-led tutoring.

• However, there was a different picture for pupils and schools taking part in the academic mentoring and tuition partners scheme.
• The evaluation found no evidence that these schemes led to any improvement in English or maths.

The right idea

• Positives note can be found in a recent survey of schools taking part in the National Tutoring Programme in its third year, 2022-23.
• This survey indicates that most schools are using the school-led tutoring route, which this analysis showed led to at least some improvement for pupils.
• The survey also showed that over a third of schools were offering tutoring courses of longer than 15 hours.
• I have previously argued that a strategy which considers all of these elements would be of most benefit to pupils.

Helena Gillespie receives funding from TASO and has previously received research funding from the European Union, HEFCE and Advance HE.