£1 billion for national tutoring revolution in next step of government’s £1.4 billion education recovery plan

Huge expansion of #tutoring in next step of government’s education recovery plan 

• £1 billion for national tutoring revolution which will see up to 100 million tutoring hours for children and young people across England
• Further investment of over £250 million to help give 500,000 teachers world-leading training
• This package is a further instalment in the government’s work to ensure no child loses out on their education as a result of the pandemic

Children and young people across England will be offered up to 100 million hours of free tuition to help them catch up on learning lost during the pandemic.

As part of the next step in the government’s plans to boost education recovery, a total of £1.4 billion is being invested, including £1 billion to support up to 6 million, 15-hour tutoring courses for disadvantaged school children, as well as an expansion of the 16-19 tuition fund, targeting key subjects such as maths and English.

£400 million will help give early years practitioners and 500,000 school teachers across the country training and support, and schools and colleges will be funded to give some year 13 students the option to repeat their final year.

It builds on the £1.7 billion already announced to help children catch up on what they missed during the pandemic, which includes summer schools and mental health support, bringing total investment to over £3 billion.

The government has committed to an ambitious, long-term education recovery plan and the next stage will include a review of time spent in school and college and the impact this could have on helping children and young people to catch up. The findings of the review will be set out later in the year to inform the spending review.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said:

“Young people have sacrificed so much over the last year and as we build back from the pandemic, we must make sure that no child is left behind.

“This next step in our long-term catch up plan should give parents confidence that we will do everything we can to support children who have fallen behind and that every child will have the skills and knowledge they need to fulfil their potential.”

One course of high-quality tutoring has been proven to boost attainment by three to five months, so tutoring will be vital for young people in recovering the teaching hours lost in the last year.

The government expects the £1 billion investment to transform the availability and approach to tuition in every school and college over the next three years, making sure when teachers identify a disadvantaged child in need of support as a result of the pandemic, extra support is available. 

£153 million will provide the opportunity for evidence-based professional development for early years practitioners, including through new programmes focusing on key areas such as speech and language development for the youngest children.

£253 million will expand existing teacher training and development to give 500,000 school teachers the opportunity to access world-leading training appropriate for whatever point they are at in their career, from new teachers to headteachers. This represents a significant overhaul of teacher training in this country, and will ensure children are supported by world-leading teachers.

Schools or colleges will be able to offer students in year 13 the option to repeat the year if they have been particularly badly affected by the pandemic. Schools and colleges will be funded by the Department to help accommodate the additional student numbers.

Sector Reaction

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said:

“This is the third major package of catch-up funding in twelve months and demonstrates that we are taking a long-term, evidence-based approach to help children of all ages.

“I am incredibly proud it recognises the efforts and dedication of our teachers who are at the forefront of children’s recovery – making sure every teacher has the opportunity to access world-leading training, giving them the skills and tools to help every child they work with to fulfil their potential.

“The package will not just go a long way to boost children’s learning in the wake of the disruption caused by the pandemic but also help bring back down the attainment gap that we’ve been working to eradicate.”

Education Recovery Commissioner Sir Kevan Collins said:

“The pandemic has caused a huge disruption to the lives of England’s children.

“Supporting every child to get back on track will require a sustained and comprehensive programme of support.

“The investments in teaching quality and tutoring announced today offer evidence-based support to a significant number of our children and teachers. But more will be needed to meet the scale of the challenge.”

Kate Green MP, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, said:

“This announcement makes a mockery of the Prime Minister’s claim that education is a priority.

“His own education recovery commissioner has all but said this plan is insufficient. Sir Kevan Collins told Ministers that 10 times this level of investment was needed to help children recover.

“Labour has set out a bold plan that will provide new opportunities for all children to play, learn and develop post-pandemic. The Government has let down children and families over the last year and the last decade and is set to do so again.”

Kate Green also comments after Kevan Collins’ announced his resignation, commenting: 

“Kevan Collins’ resignation is a damning indictment of the Conservatives’ education catch-up plan. 

“He was brought in by Boris Johnson because of his experience and expertise in education, but the Government have thrown out his ideas as soon as it came to stumping up the money needed to deliver them. 

“Labour has set out a plan to deliver the bold policies that will boost children’s recovery from the pandemic recognising that learning and wellbeing go hand-in-hand together. 

“Our children and their future ambitions and life chances depend on us getting this right. The Conservatives’ failure to deliver for children now could cost our country dearly long-term.”

Sir Peter Lampl, founder and Executive Chair of the Sutton Trust and chairman of the Education Endowment Foundation, said:

“Creating an ambitious, sustainable recovery plan to support every pupil is a considerable challenge. The extension of tutoring for the most disadvantaged young people is crucial as it’s a highly cost-effective method of making up for lost learning. The focus on quality teaching, investing in the teaching profession and early years practitioners is also much needed. 

“However, the proposed funding is only a fraction of what is required. Low-income students who have already been most heavily impacted by Covid-19 will be disadvantaged even more and overall standards, which have fallen dramatically, will be very slow to recover.

“Sir Kevan Collins is right that much more will be needed if we are to mitigate the long-term impact of the pandemic.”

David Hughes, Chief Executive of AoC, said:

“The plans for the next steps of the recovery plan will disappoint colleges and students with the least amount of time left in education. The extension of the tuition funding is good news but the failure to fund additional teaching hours or to extend the pupil premium to age 18 means that many disadvantaged students may fall through the gaps.

“Our young people (aged 16 to 18) have far fewer contact hours than their peers in other OECD countries and this was a missed opportunity to address that. Without further investment the government is risking the potential of a generation of young people.”

Responding to the government’s education recovery plan Eleanor Harrison, CEO of youth charity Impetus said:

“Tutoring, delivered well, is one of the best evidenced ways of supporting young people to achieve academically at school. We’re delighted both the government and the Labour party are committed to enabling schools to invest in it.

“In the push to reach high numbers of pupils, it is critical that quality continues to be integrated into programme design and delivery. Scaling with quality is the mantra needed. This is essential to realise better education outcomes for the young people who need it most – those from disadvantaged backgrounds, who were struggling even before the pandemic.”

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of NAHT, which represents leaders in the majority of schools, said:

“After weeks of talking big and building expectation for education recovery this announcement only confirms the government’s lack of ambition for education. It’s a damp squib – some focus in a couple of the right areas is simply not enough.

“The funding announced to back these plans is paltry compared to the amounts other countries have invested, or even compared to government spending on business recovery measures during the pandemic.

“Education recovery cannot be done on the cheap. The question about how much should be spent on recovery is best answered with ‘whatever it costs’, such is the importance of investing in the future wellbeing of our young people and the future prosperity of our nation.

“The government had the opportunity here to invest in the architecture of education; instead it has chosen to paper over the cracks. As is often the case, young people seem to be low on the government priority list.

“That said, we are relieved to see that some of the more headline grabbing measures previously suggested have been shelved for now. Extending the school day in particular had the potential to negatively impact on pupils’ mental health, reduce family time and leave less time for extra-curricular activities. Children’s happiness and wellbeing should be prioritised as well as their education, or we risk doing more harm than good.

“Schools have already gone to incredible lengths in order to protect and care for pupils since March 2020, and to help them recover since they returned to school earlier this year. Fortunately, education professionals don’t wait for the government to tell them how to do their jobs and have been working on recovery all along, but real support for that effort is badly lacking. Schools will be left uninspired by this.”

National Education Union’s 10-point plan for education recovery

Dr Mary Bousted, Joint General Secretary of the National Education Union, said: 

“The Government’s plans for education recovery for the nation’s pupils are inadequate and incomplete. Rarely has so much been promised and so little delivered.

“The ‘new’ money being offered amounts to £1.4bn – way below the £15bn sum which Kevan Collins, the Education Recovery tzar, judged is needed to repair the damage done to the nation’s pupils because of Covid. 

“Where in these plans is the funding for extra-curricular activities to support children and young people to regain their confidence in their abilities and talents?

“Where is the funding for drama and music, sport and skills development? 

“The Treasury has shown, in this paltry offer, that it does not understand, nor does it appreciate, the essential foundation laid by education for the nation’s economic recovery. Its failure, on this scale, to fund what is needed for education recovery, is a scar which will take generations of children and young people to heal.  They, their parents and our nation deserve much better than this.” 

Dr Patrick Roach, General Secretary of the NASUWT-The Teachers’ Union, said:

“The Government has managed once again to raise the expectations of the nation’s children, only to let them down with a lukewarm announcement.

“Today’s announcement will inevitably raise questions about whether the Government has an adequate plan for dealing with the challenges children and young people continue to experience as a result of the pandemic and the disruption that has been caused to their education, personal, social and emotional development.

“The Government needs to recognise that schools alone cannot solve the problems caused by the pandemic and that substantial additional investment will also be needed for a raft of essential services to support children and families, including investment in mental health and counselling services.

“It is not in the interests of children and young people to ask teachers simply to soldier on.

“Today’s announcement falls far short of what is needed to secure an education recovery or to support schools and teachers who are already working flat out to support children and young people whose education and wellbeing has been impacted significantly during the pandemic.”

Cllr Anntoinette Bramble, Chair of the Children and Young People Board at the Local Government Association, which represents councils across England and Wales, said:

“No child should be left behind as we recover from the pandemic and this package of measures and significant investment announced by the Government will help to boost education recovery.

“Education recovery will be a long-term endeavour and go beyond academic achievement. It is vital that we also support children and young people’s socialisation, communication and mental health and wellbeing.

“Recovery support should be made available to all children and young people but it is vital that vulnerable children, who have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, are the focus of this work. Councils stand ready to use their role as local leaders and education system conveners to ensure that the Government’s national education recovery objectives meet the needs of local communities.”

Jane Harley, Policy & Partnership Director at Oxford University Press, said:

“The Government’s announcement of an additional £1.4 billion to boost education recovery is welcome, but it does not seem to go far enough. Learners, as well as their teachers and parents, need to see significant investment as we recover from the pandemic, to ensure that schools’ education recovery plans can be fully and properly implemented.” 

“In particular, we need to see further investment in literacy. Oxford University Press’s research has found worrying evidence of a heightened ‘word gap’ – where a child’s vocabulary is below age-related expectations – following school closures. This has an especially negative impact for disadvantaged learners, and is a significant concern since a word gap at 11 affects not just future attainment, but also wellbeing and motivation, so unnecessarily limiting future life chances.” 

“We cannot allow children to become the long-term victims of lockdown measures. And we hope that the upcoming review into the time spent in school and college, will lay the foundations for more ambitious plans, reflecting the recommendations of the Education Recovery Commissioner, as we look towards the spending review this Autumn.”

Stewart Watts, VP EMEA at D2L said: 

“Events of the past year have truly tested the education sector. While institutions have made great strides in these extreme circumstances, addressing the digital divide has proven a real challenge, and those from disadvantaged backgrounds have been left with serious gaps in their learning.  

“In fact, the unprecedented nature of the crisis makes it hard to predict the actual long-term effects. As teachers are faced with ‘the great catch up’ and the education sector strives to recover the lost time in the classroom, it is vital that all students are accounted for. The education sector must use all the data and digital tools at its disposal.  

“Teachers will need continuous insight into how students are getting on – far more data to provide real visibility into students’ performance, particularly when it comes to identifying specific areas for development. Only then will teachers be able to truly connect the online and offline experiences and fill the gaps in students’ learning over the last year.  

“As indicated by the government’s response, teacher training remains a high priority. Moving forward, teachers would benefit from Continuing Professional Development CPD to ensure they are thoroughly prepared should circumstances change, and that they are ready to use available technology. This is especially true if further investments and measures will be needed later down the line.”

Commenting on the Government’s tutoring catch-up plan, Lee Elliot Major, Professor of Social Mobility at the University of Exeter, said:

 “Having an explicit target to reach poorer pupils through government-backed tutoring is to be welcomed, but we will need more details on how the national tutoring programme will ensure that tutors are of high quality, and what evaluation plans are in place to assess how effective it has been.”

EPI found that £13.5bn will be required from the government to undo the damage to pupils’ learning as a result of the pandemic 

Jon Andrews, Head of Analysis at the Education Policy Institute (EPI) said:

“At £50 per pupil, our analysis shows that today’s funding package is a long way off what is required to remedy the lost learning seen by pupils over the last year. This was an opportunity for the government to offer significant investment in a range of evidence-based interventions that would help protect against long-run negative impacts to young people’s education and wellbeing. They have decided not to take that opportunity.

“Today’s proposals are an inadequate response to the challenge the country is facing with young people’s education, wellbeing, and mental health.”

David Laws, Executive Chairman of the Education Policy Institute (EPI), said:

“The government’s education recovery package does not remotely match the scale of lost learning and is unlikely to be enough to support children to catch up on the many months of lost learning that most have suffered.

“It appears that the government’s own Education Recovery Commissioner recommended a package of policies that would have delivered ten times the financial support unveiled today – £15bn, instead of the £1.4bn announced. 

“It is unclear why the government has chosen to ignore the evidence of how much it would cost to recover lost learning, but there must now be a real concern that learning loss will not be recovered and that the most disadvantaged pupils will fall permanently behind the rest. 

“In the longer term, the unmitigated learning losses could cause lower productivity, lower earnings, and lower tax revenues – so skimping on a properly funded recovery package will prove to be a false economy.”

All ages from two to 19 are comprehensively covered by the offers of radically expanded tuition, specialist training for early years and for school teachers at every stage of their career, from new teachers to head teachers, as well as the option for some year 13 students to repeat their final year.

Schools will now be able to provide additional tutoring support using locally employed tutors. This will build on the successful National Tutoring Programme, galvanising tuition providers to deliver the one-to-one and small group tutoring for pupils right across the country, to the highest standards and greatest possible impact.

Randstad will be the new supplier of the NTP from September 2021. They will be supported by Teach First to ensure the programme is successfully set up for effective delivery and continuous improvement in academic year 21/22.

This announcement applies to schools, colleges and early years providers in England. The Devolved Administrations will receive Barnett funding in the usual way, with final figures being confirmed at the upcoming Spending Review.

Teacher training programmes:

• £153 million of new funding for training for early years staff to support the very youngest children’s learning and development. This will involve new programmes focusing on key areas such as speech and language.
• £69 million of new funding to extend the rollout of the Early Career Framework reforms for teacher training in the first two years after qualification. The ECF reforms provide a funded entitlement to a structured two-year package of high-quality professional development, which will now be available to all new teachers. Teachers in their first year after qualifying already have funded time off timetable to access this training, which will be extended to second year teachers from this September – a year earlier than previously planned. The further £32m cost of this will be met through existing DfE schools budgets.
• £184 million of new funding for middle- and late-career National Professional Qualifications. The existing NPQs in Senior Leadership, Headship and Executive Leadership have also been refreshed and will begin to be delivered from September, underpinned by the latest and best evidence of what works. The current NPQ in Middle Leadership is being replaced with three new specialist NPQs for teachers and leaders who want to broaden and deepen their expertise in specialist areas of teaching also available from this September.

Tuition rollout:

• £218 million of the additional £1 billion for tutoring will be directed through the government’s flagship National Tutoring Programme (NTP). This is on top of the £215 million already planned to be invested in the 21/22 academic year.
• £579 million will fund schools to develop local tutoring provision using new or existing school staff. This will complement the NTP offer with tutors directly employed by schools. Schools will be funded in accordance with their pupil premium allocations.
• The funding is expected to cover around 75% of the costs of local tutoring provision in academic year 2021/22 with the schools contributing the remaining costs. Given the importance of tutoring, and in line with existing NTP processes, schools will be expected to increase their financial contribution over timesuch that they are meeting the majority of costs by the end of the funding period. This will help ensure that tutoring is increasingly embedded as an effective tool for schools to use to help their pupils who are falling behind.
• £222 million will fund an extension to the existing 16-19 tutoring programme, expected to deliver around 700,000 courses each year.
• Every state school with a Reception class in England can already apply for training and resources through the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) programme, proven to be effective in raising outcomes in Reception-age children’s early language, communication and speech skills.

NTP programme:

• The NTP will continue to operate with both the Tuition Partner and Academic Mentor pillars familiar from the current academic year and with a focus on the same subjects and quality-approved tuition.
• For academic year 2021/22, the government will continue to make sure that support reaches disadvantaged pupils, while giving teachers and heads the discretion to support the pupils they believe are most in need.
• The NTP will target a minimum of 65% of provision through the Tuition Partner stream to reach pupils eligible for the pupil premium – making sure there is an appropriate balance between teacher discretion and assurance that the programme is reaching those who are most in need.
• The programme will also continue to focus towards areas with the lowest proportions of Good and Outstanding schools, making sure the tutoring market is developed sustainably across the country.
• The Department followed a standard procurement process to select next year’s supplier. 

Evidence on learning loss:

• Research from the Education Policy Institute due to be released shortly shows that despite making some progress to recover during the Autumn term, on average pupils were similarly far behind expectations in March 2021 after closures early this year, as they were in September 2020 – underscoring the importance of being back in the classroom with excellent teachers and the need for further action to prevent losses compounding further.

National Education Recovery Plan – 10-point plan for education