Recommendation 4

We are not confident that schools will be able to afford to provide tutoring on the scale required to support all the pupils who need it once the Department withdraws its subsidy. By the end of 2021/22, pupils had started 2.5 million courses under the National Tutoring Programme. The Department made available funding of £594 million to subsidise the cost of tutoring in that period. But it is reducing its subsidy for tutoring under the National Tutoring Programme each year, with the result that the rate of subsidy will drop from 75% in 2020/21 to 25% in 2023/24. After that, schools will have to cover the full cost of tutoring from other sources, such as pupil premium funding. School budgets are already under significant pressure. Written evidence submitted to us shows that some schools are struggling to fund the cost of tutoring in 2022/23, when the Department is still providing a 60% subsidy. The Department wants tutoring to become an integral part of the school system, but it is clear that without extra funding schools will find it difficult to maintain tutoring on a comparable scale to that currently being provided. The Department has committed to model the impact of removing the subsidy on the affordability of tutoring for schools. Recommendation 4: The Department should monitor how much tutoring is being provided, in 2022/23 and 2023/24 when it is providing a subsidy, and in subsequent years, and intervene if tutoring levels drop significantly.