NTP Funding is About to Change: Here’s What That Means For Your School

The Education Secretary has announced a significant change to the funding of the National Tutoring Programme. With the departure of services firm Randstad from the government’s flagship catch-up tutoring scheme now confirmed, Nadhim Zahawi has pledged to ‘simplify’ the NTP by routing money directly to schools.

From September, £349 million will be made accessible to schools to administer their own catch-up tutoring activities. This represents a major shift in the scheme’s funding model. Schools currently have three options for using their tutoring subsidy. They can either rely on an approved Tuition Partner to find them private tutors, have Randstad connect them with academic mentors to add to their payroll, or use the ringfenced school-led tutoring grant to arrange tutoring resources independently.

From the start of the 2022/23 academic year, the school-led tutoring route will become the default way of accessing NTP funding. Schools will have the freedom of picking their own private tutors, whether they’re agency educators, supply teachers or current and former staff members. School leaders will also still be able to take on the services of Tuition Partners and employ academic mentors but will no longer have to go through a central supplier to do so.

While full details of the funding structure for the 2022/23 academic year have not yet been confirmed, the current arrangements for the School-Led Tutoring route provide an indicator of what to expect.

During the 2021/22 school year, all schools with Pupil Premium enrollment have automatically been awarded the funding to cover 75% of their NTP tutoring costs. This has been paid in three instalments over the course of the academic year. Schools have needed to fund the remaining 25% through alternative budgets.

With a separate subsidy also available through the NTP’s mentoring or Tuition Partner routes, schools have two pots of money available for them to use on catch up tuition before the end of August. However, any funding that goes unused will be recouped by the DfE. This use-it-or-lose-it arrangement is likely to be replicated over the 2022/23 academic year.

We expect the exact proportion of funding available under the new model to be announced over the coming months. Teaching Personnel will be sure to let you know as and when this is confirmed.

As official Tuition Partners since the scheme’s inception, Teaching Personnel welcomes these changes. Direct, automatic access to NTP funding will give schools the freedom to shape their catch-up efforts around their pupils’ real needs.

The sheer amount of learning lost during the pandemic should leave no room for doubt: it is crucial that the NTP succeeds. Its effect within participating schools has been transformative, as the remarkable progress figures laid out in our impact report demonstrate. Yet the scheme has fallen short of take-up targets, with some schools hesitant to engage due to perceptions around bureaucracy and barriers to entry.

This move to centre the School-Led Tutoring route will better align the project with how schools already prefer to use it. Of the million NTP courses started to date, over half have been through the School-Led route alone. Schools appreciate the flexibility, the simplicity and the lack of mediation that the direct grant offers. We expect that the DfE’s decision to make School-Led Tutoring the default option will see more schools engage with the NTP.

Teaching Personnel has been at the forefront of delivering the National Tutoring Programme through all its funding routes ever since the scheme was launched in September 2020. We’ve already helped hundreds of schools use their School-Led Tutoring Grant to take on experienced, flexible tutors who know how to raise pupil outcomes.

The new, streamlined NTP will give schools the autonomy to help their most disadvantaged pupils achieve more. Whatever your vision for your catch up scheme, Teaching Personnel can help you make it real. Let’s get started together.