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Written evidence submitted by The Tutor Trust

Introduction and summary

1.1.   Tutor Trust is pleased to submit evidence to the Public Accounts Committee about the Government’s programme for education recovery in schools. As a Tuition Partner under the National Tutoring Programme for each of the last three years, and a registered charity with more than a decade’s experience of providing high-quality tutoring to pupils from disadvantaged communities, we believe that tutoring is a proven intervention that can accelerate progress and narrow the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers.

1.2.   In 2020, following the disruption to education caused by the pandemic, we were part of a broad coalition that called for major government investment in tutoring as one of the best-evidenced ways of boosting the learning of disadvantaged pupils.

1.3.   We believe the NTP has had a positive impact on children and young people in England, with over 2.8 million course starts between November 2020 and October 2022,[1] and has helped mitigate some of the learning losses of the pandemic. We call for the continuation of specific funding for tutoring to embed it as a permanent part of schools’ offer to their pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

1.4.   We believe that for the NTP to achieve its objective of narrowing the attainment gap, which widened considerably during the pandemic, the DfE should:

1.4.1. reinstate clear targets for schools to ensure that the majority of children and young people receiving NTP tutoring are eligible for Pupil Premium.

1.4.2. ensure there is robust and thorough evaluation of the effectiveness of the programme, including the diversity of tutoring delivery models that are taking place within schools.

1.4.3. slow down the planned decrease in subsidies and commit to further funding for tutoring in schools beyond 2024.

2.      About Tutor Trust

2.1.   Tutor Trust is a registered charity with a mission to transform lives through tutoring.

2.2.   We were founded in September 2011, with a grant from the Education Endowment Foundation, in response to the inequity of access to tutoring. Our Co-founders responded to the unfairness that children from disadvantaged backgrounds, who, on average, have lower attainment than more affluent peers at all stages in education, were the least likely to be able to access the 1:1 and small group tutoring that could accelerate progress.

2.3.   We started supporting pupils in February 2012, partnering with schools to deliver high-quality, high-impact tutoring that would narrow the attainment gap rather than widen it.

2.4.   Since then, we have grown and expanded our reach to schools across the Greater Manchester, Leeds-Bradford and Merseyside city regions, recruiting motivated individuals to train as tutors, the vast majority of whom are students or graduates at local universities. In the last 11 years, we have supported some 30,200 young people, in the main from disadvantaged communities, to achieve their potential. In the academic year 2021/2022, two-thirds (66%) of the young people we supported were eligible to receive Pupil Premium funding.

2.5.   In 2016/17, we participated in a large-scale Effectiveness Trial, funded by the EEF. This Randomised Control Trial[2] assessed the influence of Tutor Trust’s Year 6 Maths tuition on KS2 SATS results in May 2017, taking KS1 SATS scores as the benchmark measurement. The headline results were very strong: pupils in the intervention group who received our tuition made an additional three months of progress in Maths compared with pupils in the control group.  On average, these three months of additional progress were the outcome of just 12 hours of tuition, delivered on a 1:3 tutor-to-pupil basis.  The cost of the intervention was low, at just £112 per child. The EEF found our tutors made the biggest difference to pupils on Free Schools Meals and pupils with low prior attainment.  The pupils in this evaluation were three times more likely to be on Free School Meals than the national average. Evidence from this RCT was used in the design of the framework of the National Tutoring Programme.

2.6.   Every aspect of our work – from tutor recruitment through to managing school partnerships – has been refined over the years to ensure every hour of tuition has the maximum impact. Our tuition programmes take account of: (a) the specific needs of schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods and (b) the additional barriers to learning faced by disadvantaged pupils and vulnerable learners.

2.7.   In the 2022 SATs and GCSEs, the first formal exams in three years, the impact of tuition on our tutees was evident. They made progress in both sets of exams, and, at GCSE, out-performed disadvantaged young people both locally and nationally. Further information about this can be found in our Impact Report.[3] 

3. Learning loss during the pandemic

3.1.   Research has consistently found that the existing gap in attainment between disadvantaged pupils and their peers has been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The February 2023 report by the National Audit Office, 'Education Recovery in Schools in England’[4], confirmed this, highlighting that the learning loss endured by disadvantaged pupils has been proportionally greater than that of other pupils since 2019.

3.2.   The report found that, in summer 2021, disadvantaged secondary pupils were 2.4 months behind where they were expected to be in reading, compared with 1.2 months for all secondary pupils.

3.3.   The growing gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers was reflected in the 2022 SATs. In Year 6, the disadvantage gap index was 3.23 in 2022, compared with 2.91 in 2019.  In reading, attainment remained stable for disadvantaged pupils at 62% and increased from 78% to 80% for other pupils. In writing, attainment fell from 68% to 55% for disadvantaged pupils and from 83% to 75% for other pupils. In Maths, attainment fell from 67% to 56% for disadvantaged pupils and from 84% to 78% for other pupils.[5]

3.4.   Overall, GCSE results for all pupils were higher than in 2019, reflecting Ofqual’s approach that grading in 2022 should represent a midpoint between the 2019 grades and the 2021 teacher-assessed grades. However, the disadvantage gap widened in both 2021 and 2022, and now stands at 3.84 – its widest in a decade. Attainment across every headline measure was lower for disadvantaged pupils than for non-disadvantaged peers.[6]

3.5.   The widening of the disadvantage gap in both primary and secondary phases strongly indicates that disadvantaged pupils experienced greater learning loss over the course of the pandemic than their peers. According to Learning during the pandemic: review of research from England, [7] experiences of teaching and learning during the pandemic were diverse, but disadvantage and deprivation appear to be most associated with less effective learning and overall learning losses

3.6.   The COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities (COSMO)[8] study highlights that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds were most heavily impacted by school closures. Pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds were less likely to access online teaching, were less likely to have access to devices at home to learn on, and, on average, spent less time learning at home than more advantaged peers, with pupils eligible for FSM spending 0.29 fewer days per week learning than non-FSM eligible pupils. 

3.7.   Since schools have fully reopened, the school attendance of disadvantaged pupils has remained considerably lower than that of others. In the autumn term of 2021/22, the most recent term for which data was available, 33.6% of pupils who were eligible for Free School Meals were persistently absent from school, compared with 20% of pupils who were not eligible.[9]

3.8.   Regional disparities were also evident throughout the pandemic, with schools and colleges in the North particularly badly affected.  By the second half of the 2020 autumn term, primary pupils in the North East and North West experienced the greatest loss in reading in the country, of 2.0 and 1.9 months respectively.[10] This is unsurprising, as the pandemic’s effects were greatest in the North of England, with an average 17% higher mortality rate and 41 additional days of lockdown. The NHSA’s Child of the North Report Building a Fairer Future after COVID-19[11], states that young people in the North of England, particularly those from ‘disadvantaged’ communities, have fallen further behind in attainment.

3.9.   The emotional impact of the pandemic on children and young people in the North was also more pronounced than elsewhere, with data showing children aged 5-16 in the North of England experienced more mental health difficulties than children elsewhere in the country.[12]

3.10.         It is clear that the pandemic and associated learning loss did not affect all children and young people equally, and that schools and communities already at a disadvantage were further disadvantaged by the pandemic. Schools in the North, particularly in the communities that we serve, have disproportionate numbers of vulnerable and disadvantaged children, and research suggests that the regional differences in learning loss were driven by disadvantaged pupils consistently falling behind. As a result of the pandemic, schools serving these children and young people thus face an even steeper uphill battle to ensure these children and young people achieve outcomes on par with their more affluent peers.

4. The National Tutoring Programme as a means of narrowing the attainment gap

4.1.   In 2020, Tutor Trust welcomed the government’s focus on Education Recovery and was, along with our sector partners in the Fair Education Alliance, involved in calls for a large-scale tutoring offer to help mitigate lost learning. We strongly called for this to be targeted at disadvantaged learners. Tutor Trust was one of four organisations to participate in the National Online Tuition Pilot in Summer 2020, funded by the EEF, which found that delivering online tutoring to support learners during lockdowns was feasible.[13] We welcomed the announcement of the National Tutoring Programme in June 2020, and our year one application to be an accredited NTP Tuition Partner was scored top out of 393 applications. We have been a Tuition Partner for all three years of the programme.

4.2.   There is strong research evidence that tutoring is an effective means of accelerating pupil progress, the EEF’s teaching and learning toolkit finding an impact of +4 months.[14] Our own 2016/17 randomised control trial is an important piece of supporting evidence.[15] We therefore believe the NTP was a vital intervention in helping to mitigate learning losses. We are pleased that there have been over 2,800,000 course starts on tutoring programmes funded by the NTP between November 2020 and October 2022.[16] We have seen our own volume of delivery considerably expand due to the NTP subsidies, and in 2021/22 supported more than 6,700 pupils – almost triple that in 2018/19.

4.3.   There have been challenges in delivering tutoring through the NTP, not least the year-on-year changes in funding and delivery models.

4.3.1.      The introduction of the school-led tutoring route in Summer 2021, combined with the awarding of the contract to run the Tuition Partners pillar of NTP to a different provider, Randstad, created three routes through which schools could access tutoring. This caused considerable confusion, not least because the subsidy for school-led tutoring (SLT), at 75%, was higher than that for the Tuition Partners (TP) route, at 70%.  There was thus no clear incentive for schools to access the TP pillar until they had spent their SLT funding.

4.3.2.      In Year 2 The TP pillar also involved schools accessing an online hub developed by Randstad, which was time-consuming and burdensome, while communication from Randstad to tuition partners was consistently poor. The additional requirements involved in the TP pillar, combined with the freedom of the school-led route, meant that the TP pillar was off-putting for schools. Despite being an accredited Tuition Partner, we delivered 80% of our work in 2021/22 through the SLT route.

4.3.3.      We were also deeply concerned that the original target – that 65% of pupils receiving tutoring should be disadvantaged – was scrapped in early March 2022.[17]

4.4.   In December 2021, our then Chief Executive Nick Bent gave evidence to the Education Committee regarding the Government’s catch-up programme and the performance of the National Tutoring Programme under Randstad. He described the online NTP hub as being ‘frustrating and off-putting’ for schools, that more marketing was required to increase the numbers of pupils supported by tuition through the NTP, and that the tapering off of the NTP subsidies was a real concern to charities such as Tutor Trust and others in the sector.[18]

4.5.   We have welcomed many of the changes introduced by the DfE in Year Three of the programme, including the decision not to extend the contract with Randstad and the scrapping of the NTP Hub. We have developed positive working relationships with Tribal, the provider appointed to oversee the Quality Assurance of Tuition Partners. 

4.6.   However, there are a number of elements of continuing concern that we would like to highlight to the Committee. Our aim in doing so is to ensure that the NTP meets its aim of supporting disadvantaged pupils and narrowing the attainment gap.

4.6.1.      Pupil targeting

4.6.2.      Quality assurance and evaluation 

4.6.3.      Affordability of tutoring for schools

              We go through these in further detail in sections 5, 6 and 7 below.

5. Pupil targeting

5.1     The NTP could provide greater value for money by more effectively targeting tuition at those young people eligible for Pupil Premium funding.  The risk is that, in targeting tuition at all pupils, the attainment gap widens further, leaving disadvantaged pupils even further behind.

5.2     In 2020/21, 46% of the 184,000 pupils receiving tutoring under the Tuition Partners pillar were eligible for Pupil Premium.

5.3     When the contract for the second year of the programme was awarded to Randstad, a target that 65% of the participating pupils should receive Pupil Premium funding was set. No corresponding target had been set for the school-led route.

5.4     In January 2022, Randstad told the Education Select Committee that it could not release figures regarding the percentage of pupils who were disadvantaged as these were being 'quality assured’.[19] In March 2022, Tuition Partners were told they no longer had to ensure that 65% of children receiving support were eligible for Pupil Premium.[20] This was in the context of low take-up for the Tuition Partners pillar run by Randstad.

5.5     The DfE were for a long time reluctant to release figures regarding the percentage of pupils receiving tutoring under the NTP who are eligible for Pupil Premium. Data received in December 2022 under a Freedom of Information Request from Schools Week suggested that in the second year of the programme, 49% of pupils receiving tutoring through the Tuition Partners pillar were eligible for Pupil Premium, with the percentage as low as 30% in the North East.

5.6     More recent data from the National Audit Office[21], published in January 2023, showed that 51% of pupils receiving tutoring through Tuition Partners in 2021/22 were disadvantaged, while 47% of those receiving tutoring through the school-led pillar in the same year were disadvantaged.

5.7     The NAO’s report also highlighted that the majority of disadvantaged pupils in England have not received support from the NTP. 25% of all disadvantaged pupils have received tutoring through the school-led route (compared with 14% of all pupils), while 5% of all disadvantaged pupils have received tutoring through Tuition Partners.

5.8     With all the money now going directly to schools through the school-led tutoring grant, there appears to be no clear message from the DfE to schools regarding the targeting of the grant.

5.9     We recognise that Pupil Premium is a broad measure and that schools require a degree of flexibility in deciding which pupils are most in need of tutoring. However, given the large and growing gap in attainment between disadvantaged pupils and their peers, and the clear evidence that disadvantaged pupils experienced the largest degree of learning loss over the course of the pandemic, we strongly believe that the programme needs to be focused on disadvantaged pupils. We call for the reinstatement of a clear target to schools regarding the percentage of beneficiaries who receive Pupil Premium funding.

6. Quality Assurance and Evaluation

6.1.    The rollout of the NTP was a clear opportunity to gather evidence as to the impact that tutoring could have on accelerating pupil progress and narrowing the attainment gap when deployed at a large scale. However, we are concerned that lack of evaluation of the different interventions provided under the NTP, and their impact, is inconsistent and does not paint a clear picture of what has worked (and should be rolled out further) and what hasn’t.

6.2.    The initial design of the NTP was informed by the best available research evidence, including the maximum group size of 1:3, the targeting of tutoring at disadvantaged pupils, and the requirement that each pupil received a minimum of 15 hours of support.[22] 

6.3.    The EEF commissioned the NFER to conduct an evaluation of the first year of the tutoring programme. Due to the ongoing disruption of the pandemic, including the cancellation of SATs and the replacement of GCSE exams with CAGs, the evaluation was largely inconclusive.[23] A further barrier to measuring the effect was the high level of dilution, with the number of Pupil Premium-eligible pupils receiving tutoring in most of the schools low considering the proportion of all pupils eligible for PP in the school. 

6.4.    The research did indicate that, in a subset of schools where 50% and 70% or more of their PP-eligible pupils in Year 11 received tutoring, there was a ‘positive and significant impact of TP for both Maths and English (equivalent to two months’ additional progress).[24] Although a preliminary analysis, this suggests that the original design of the Tuition Partners pillar of NTP had the potential to accelerate the progress of disadvantaged pupils and narrow the attainment gap.

6.5.    Since the first year of the programme, there has been increasing diversity among the forms of tutoring provided. The launch of the SLT route in Year 2 was popular with schools, who valued the flexibility and autonomy it provided for them to adapt the programme to meet the needs of their pupils. The NFER’s Implementation and Process Evaluation of the second year of the programme highlighted that schools valued autonomy and flexibility in how to use the grant, which was one reason why, in the second year of the programme, schools were more likely to participate in SLT than in Tuition Partners, with 72% involved in SLR compared with 34% in       TP.[25]

6.6.    However, this increasing flexibility for schools also meant that some parameters around delivery were removed. For example, from September 2021, schools using SLT were able to increase the maximum group size from 1:3 to 1:6. This was extended to delivery under TP in March 2022.[26]

6.7.    This is an example of where the programme has deviated from the research evidence – the Education Endowment Foundation states that ‘evidence shows that small group tuition is effective and, as a rule of thumb, the smaller the group the better’. The EEF’s evidence suggests that once group size increases above six or seven, ‘there is a noticeable reduction in effectiveness’.[27]

6.8.    We are broadly confident that the tutoring provided by Tuition Partners continues to be of high quality and aligned with research evidence. We welcomed the appointment of Tribal to undertake the Quality Assurance of Tuition Partners in 2022/23. We also particularly welcomed the decision that schools spending their school-led tutoring grant to purchase external tutoring would have to use an accredited Tuition Partner, which had not been the case in 2021/22 under SLT.

6.9.    We, alongside other Tuition Partners, worked with Tribal in developing their framework for Quality Assuring Tuition Partners and believe that this is robust in ensuring that accredited NTP Tuition Partners deliver consistently high-quality tutoring to schools and pupils.

6.10.         However, we think there is less robustness around the quality assurance and evaluation of internal tutoring provision within schools. While schools are submitting information about reach and delivery in the termly census and the End of Year Statement, we are concerned about the robustness of this data and have some doubts about the extent to which it reflects the actual delivery of tutoring within schools.

6.11.         We have experienced pushback from some prospective partner schools around the parameters we maintain around the delivery of our tutoring programmes – in particular, our maximum group size of 1:3, our targeting of programmes towards PP-eligible pupils, and our requirement that pupils receive at least 15 hours of support. All of these are linked to research evidence and are aligned with the initial design of the NTP. Some schools are expressing the wish to diverge considerably from this programme, for example in allowing tutors to work with different pupils each session or to effectively behave as in-class teaching assistants. We have said no to such requests, on the grounds that these types of programmes are not backed by research evidence. On some occasions, this has led to schools declining to work with us.

6.12.         We believe that some programmes delivered internally within schools are diverging considerably from the initial programme design of the NTP.  For example, groups of 1:6 tutoring delivered by a Teaching Assistant, particularly where different pupils attend each session, are not materially different to the way teaching assistants would have worked prior to the NTP.

6.13.         The Centre for Education and Youth’s ‘Levelling Up Tutoring’[28] report highlights the worries in the sector that some NTP funding is being used to fund activities that were already taking place in schools before the launch of the NTP. We echo this concern, and thoroughly support James Turner’s statement:“It’s vital that the NTP is additive, not substitutive. We don’t want the NTP’s funding going to schools to rebadge what they are already doing.”

6.14.         We welcome the continued evaluation of the NTP by NFER in 2022/23. However, we would warn against overreliance on delivery data provided by schools in the termly census and the End of Year statement. Given that money can be clawed back if schools have not spent the grant, there are clear incentives for schools to demonstrate compliance in the End of Year statement even if the tutoring offered has not aligned with NTP models. This is particularly the case given the pressure on school budgets, which we will shortly expand on further.

6.15.         We call for further evaluation into the diversity of tutoring offered under the NTP and the effectiveness of different implementations of tutoring. We understand schools’ wish for flexibility to spend the NTP money to meet the needs of their pupils. However, we want to highlight that this flexibility and autonomy for schools should not come at the expense of high-quality provision, and that there is a need for thorough evaluation of which implementations of tutoring are most effective.

7. Affordability of tutoring for schools

7.1.    Some of our partner schools are already struggling to afford the cost associated with participation in the NTP. In Year 2 of the programme, 75% of the costs of tutoring under the SLT pillar, and 70% of the costs under the TP pillar, were paid for through NTP funding, with schools having to co-fund 25% and 30% of the cost respectively. This year, the proportion of the cost that is subsidised has reduced to 60%. Schools are having to find 40% of the costs of tutoring from elsewhere in their budget.

7.2.    Pressures on school budgets have intensified since the launch of the NTP, and, with huge rises in energy bills and no additional funding for schools to pay for the 5% uplift in teacher salaries resulting from high inflation, many of our partner schools are struggling to balance their budgets.

7.3.    Some of our partner schools, particularly smaller schools in the primary phase, are struggling to fund the remaining 40% of the costs of tutoring programmes. Some schools are already having to shrink programme sizes compared with last year as they are unable to fund the remaining 40% of the programme for all pupils who need the support.

7.4.    In 2024/25, the projected final year of the programme, subsidies are set to shrink to 25%. This presents a real risk that more schools will be unable to find the remainder of the money to fund tutoring programmes and will therefore not use their NTP grant funding. The dramatic drop in the subsidy from 60% to 25% is likely to mean more schools opting out of NTP delivery, meaning that the aim of the programme to deliver a sustainable tutoring market in the education sector is at risk of not being achieved.

7.5.    The pressures on school budgets elsewhere also increase the likelihood that tutoring taking place within schools will be substitutive rather than additive. It is understandably tempting for schools to use the NTP funding to pay 60% of an existing Teaching Assistant’s salary rather than buy in tutoring provision. Doing this means that there is no additional cost to the school, and indeed reduces the proportion of the TA’s salary being paid for from the main budget. While Teaching Assistants can certainly deliver high-quality tutoring, there is the obvious risk that a TA employed in this way is not providing additionality.

8. Recommendations

8.1.    We believe the National Tutoring Programme has been a vital intervention to support children and young people to recover some of the learning losses of the pandemic. 1:1 and small group tutoring is a well-evidenced intervention that has the potential to narrow the attainment gap. In order for it do so, however, it needs to reach the right pupils, be attractive and affordable for schools, and be delivered according to a model that aligns with impact evidence. We therefore call for the government to:

-       Reinstate a clear target for schools regarding the proportion of beneficiaries who receive Pupil Premium funding. This should be set at at least 60%.

-       Invest further in evaluation and monitoring of the National Tutoring Programme, including the effectiveness of different strands, so that the sector gains greater understanding of which implementations of tutoring are most effective.

-       Reduce the sharpness in which subsidies decline and extend the funding of the NTP for at least another year.

-       Commit to longer term specific funding for tutoring in schools.

February 2023

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