Ahead of the new school academic year, the Department for Education announced a major expansion of the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) to help disadvantaged pupils catch up after all the disruption of the pandemic. This current academic year sees a new option added to the scheme: school-led tutoring.
School-led tutoring is a new route of the NTP that gives schools greater freedom and flexibility in how they run their catch-up efforts.
The route is made possible through a ring-fenced grant calculated according to the number of pupils at your school who are eligible for pupil premium.
This explainer will help your school use this funding to boost attainment among your most in-need pupils.
1. How much money will my school receive?
This depends on how many pupil premium recipients attend your school. The grant covers tuition for 60% of that cohort from year 1 to year 11, set at £202.50 per pupil. This rises to £529 per pupil for non-mainstream schools.
This has been calculated to cover 75% of schools’ tuition costs, with the DfE pitching in £13.50 of an assumed average hourly cost of £18 for a 15-hour package of tuition for each pupil. Schools are free to exceed this out of their own budget.
Non-mainstream schools and academy trusts will receive £529 for each 15-hour per-pupil package of tuition on account of their higher costs.
2. How does my school apply for the funding?
You don’t. This is a grant which all schools receive automatically. Schools should already have received their first payment through the Education and Skills Funding Agency.
Future instalments will reach your account in December and April for maintained schools, and January and May for academies.
3. What can my school use the funding on?
The funding is only to be used to pay for the staffing costs of tuition and must not be used for administrative costs or resources.
Schools are expected to cover the remaining 25% of tuition costs out of other budgets.
4. Does my school have to use the funding?
There is no obligation to use your school-led tutoring grant. But if you don’t use it, it will simply be recovered by the DfE at the end of the academic year. You use it or you lose it.
This money is ring-fenced, meaning that schools cannot pool it with other premia, though you can use other premia to make up the 25% of costs that the grant doesn’t cover.
5. How do schools account for the funding?
Schools who use this funding have to submit two data returns. The first comes at the end of every term in the school census, where you must disclose which pupils are receiving school-led tutoring and the cumulative number of hours delivered.
The second comes at the end of the academic year, when EFSA will send through an online form asking for details of total spend, total number of tutees and total number of hours of tutoring delivered.
6. What is the difference between the school-led tutoring route and the other NTP routes?
School-led tutoring removes the obligation to hire tutors from the NTP’s approved list of Tuition Partners. Schools will therefore be able to hire new staff or use their existing workforce.
7. Who is allowed to become an SLTG tutor?
All tutors will need to have either Qualified Teacher Status or over two years’ experience in their subject to be automatically eligible to teach through the school-led tutoring route. Those without these credentials will be required to take an 11-hour training course before they can start working.
Schools can use their own staff so long as their tutoring work does not conflict with their statutory entitlement to Planning, Preparation and Assessment. This is why it may still be simpler and more practical to hire temporary staff to run your catch-up programmes.
Protocol Education can tackle your school's learning gap
In our first year delivering the NTP, Protocol Education helped thousands of England's most disadvantaged children improve their grades in English, Maths and other core subjects. As one of the UK’s leading educational recruitment specialists, we have been able to boost our capacity even further for the scheme’s new year.
Our huge number of experienced, fully-qualified tutors are ready to help your school support the pupils who need the most help. To find out how to get the best value out of your school-led tuition grant, just get in touch today.
