Recommendation 34

Alongside the NTP tuition partners scheme, the Department is funding an academic mentors scheme led by Teach First, which aims to place between 1,000 and 1,200 mentors in disadvantaged schools in the 2020/21 school year. However, at February 2021, more than 600 schools who had requested a mentor had not been given one.62 The Department said that Teach First had done well in recruiting mentors so far, but accepted that schools had made more requests for mentors than the scheme was able to meet. It said that this demonstrated the challenge of recruiting enough mentors, and told us that it wanted to increase the number of mentors in future years.63 59 Qq 98–103 60 C&AG’s Report, para 3.15 61 COE0013 Professor Lee Elliot-Major and Mr Andrew Eyles submission, page 7 62 C&AG’s Report, para 3.16 63 Qq 93–94 COVID-19: Support for children’s education 17