Catch-up tuition not helping poorest pupils, says NAO

As reported by BBC news, the government’s programme to help pupils who have missed school time catch up may not be reaching the most disadvantaged children, a report says

The National Tutoring Programme was launched last year to give extra tuition to the UK’s poorest pupils. But fewer than half of pupils who have already received tuition as part of the scheme are from the poorest families, a National Audit Office report found. The Department for Education says it has invested £2bn to help pupils.

Chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, Meg Hillier, said the Department for Education’s “failure to do its homework” had hit children who were already most disadvantaged.

The Labour MP said: “DfE must now ensure its support is properly targeted to prevent the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers from widening even further.”

In June last year, prime minister Boris Johnson announced a £1bn catch-up fund to help pupils in England. The package included £350m for the National Tutoring Programme to help the most disadvantaged pupils, as well as £650m for schools to help children from all backgrounds catch up. Although the tuition scheme is aimed at disadvantaged children, the Dfe has not specified what proportion of children accessing it should be disadvantaged.

The report found that of the 125,200 children who had been allocated a tutoring place by February, 41,100 had started to receive tuition. Of those, 44% were eligible for pupil premium funding – a grant given to schools in England to help disadvantaged children.

That raised “questions over the extent to which the scheme will reach the most disadvantaged children”, the report said.

Academic mentors are also being placed in schools serving poorer communities to help provide intensive catch-up support. But demand had “outstripped supply”, the report added.

Mentors had been placed in 1,100 schools by February, but it had received requests from 1,789 eligible schools – meaning more than 600 had not received one.

Commenting on the report Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said:  “Any government would have struggled with a situation in which schools and colleges had to be abruptly closed to most pupils because of a global pandemic. But, even in the most charitable light, it has made far too many missteps – last summer’s grading fiasco, a sluggish response to the need for laptops, and tone-deaf decisions over free school meals which then had to be reversed – to name a few. 

“The nadir came shortly before Christmas when the government threatened schools with legal action if they switched to remote learning a few days before the end of term to avoid families having to self-isolate over Christmas.

“Throughout the pandemic, schools, colleges and staff have done everything asked of them and more. They have taught vulnerable and key worker children face-to-face while teaching everyone else remotely, put in place and managed complex safety measures to enable full reopening, and provided on-site Covid tests even though this is a medical task. It has been a monumental effort – but it hasn’t been supported well by the government, and schools and colleges deserved better.

“Nevertheless, we remain determined to work constructively with the government on an education recovery programme and we are looking to the future rather than what has happened in the past. We are encouraged by the fact that the government appears to recognise that education recovery needs to be about supporting schools and colleges to do the detailed work of providing tailored evidence-based support rather than about big eye-catching policy flourishes. 

“We are also encouraged by its acknowledgement that this will need to be backed up with extra investment across the course of this parliament. 

“While there is much work to do and detail to work out, we welcome the fact that the government appears to be listening more and dictating less.”

Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said: “This past year has been phenomenally challenging for schools and colleges. While no one could have predicted every step of the way, government has certainly been the cause of a great deal of unnecessary confusion and upset.  

“It is understandable that the government would not have an off-the-shelf plan for schools having to operate under an extended lockdown, as was the case from March 2020, but it continued to dither and delay over many months. Its refusal to listen to scientific advice on the impact on transmission rates of full on-site openings of schools and colleges, had consequences not only for children’s learning but for wider society.  

“We know that teachers, leaders and school and college staff did all they can. Learning has continued throughout this period, but there was little sign of it in Whitehall. 

“At every turn the government prioritised good press over good practice. The most damaging aspect was its state of denial over the need for a plan B even before the second lockdown loomed, not to mention the third. Nearly a year on, the government limps to the finishing line with its laptops scheme – but this should have been resolved last summer. It is shameful that it continued for so long, leaving children and young people who qualified for the scheme without the support they desperately needed.   

“As far as the education profession is concerned, the government’s reputation has greatly suffered. It idly sat by as case rates rose in schools throughout autumn term, waving away calls for a circuit break, or more robust safety measures. So much was foreseeable, so many warnings went unheeded – not least plans being put in place to prevent last year’s examination debacle.   

“The government failed to listen to the profession time and time again and must now own its mistakes. Going forward, schools and colleges still need the support and funding to address the impact COVID has had on children and young people’s education. The pandemic has shone a light on the curriculum, and parents are now much more conscious of its faults. We need to see it reformed.  

“The impact of this past year will not disappear overnight. Measures need to be in place not just for the remainder of this academic year but for the foreseeable future to ensure no child is left behind.” 

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