We’re playing a leading role in asking government to prioritise tutoring

We are joining senior figures including England’s Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel De Souza, Chair of the Education Select Committee Robin Walker MP, former Education Secretary the Rt Hon. the Lord Blunkett and Liberal Democrat education spokesperson, Munira Wilson MP – in calling for a Tutoring Guarantee over the next Parliament to narrow the widening attainment gap and support young people’s declining mental health.

Pupils from more socio-economically challenged communities across our city regions are at risk of falling further behind without the additional boost to learning that tuition can bring. Nationally, disadvantaged pupils are still lagging two months behind pre-pandemic levels of attainment.

We are working hard across the Greater Manchester, Leeds-Bradford and Merseyside city regions to narrow the attainment gap. To date this academic year, our tutors, drawn from students and graduates of local universities, qualified teachers and mid-career professionals, have supported 6,300 pupils with more than 32,000 hours of tutoring in 156 primary and secondary schools. Almost two-thirds (61%) of pupils supported were eligible for Pupil Premium funding. The majority of the schools accessing our tutoring have done so with the support of subsidies from the National Tutoring Programme, which, this year, has funded 60% of the cost of tuition.

However, despite the evidence that just 12 hours of tutoring can drive three months’ of additional progress, and with pupils still lagging two months behind pre-pandemic levels of attainment, the Government has decided to end funding for the National Tutoring Programme at the end of next year.

The coalition, led by charities including ourselves, Impetus, Action Tutoring, and Get Further, are asking for the Government instead to scale up and implement the learning from the National Tutoring Programme, targeted at pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, who need the most support.

We are asking for a Tutoring Guarantee in the next Parliament – an entitlement for all young people in receipt of Pupil Premium or equivalent, and who are behind in English or maths, to be offered a high-quality tutoring provision to help close that gap. We are calling on all political parties to support the delivery of such a guarantee over the lifetime of the next Parliament – an offer to an estimated 1.75m disadvantaged young people each year.

We will make the call at a Parliamentary Reception this afternoon to mark the anniversary of the National Tutoring Programme, where the Education Secretary, Gillian Keegan, will be the keynote speaker. The event will also see the launch of the report, The Future of Tutoring, commissioned from the polling organisation Public First. 

The new research from Public First reveals that, aside from its benefits for catching up on lost learning, tutoring can also support the post-pandemic crisis of pupil mental health and attendance.

Teachers reported that tutoring led to increased confidence, better pupil engagement in the classroom and reduced anxiety.