Lockdowns and disruption during the Covid-19 pandemic meant children's education suffered with the most disadvantaged pupils often the worst hit.
The government launched the National Tutoring Programme in November 2020 to help fund extra tutoring sessions as part of efforts to support schools and help children catch up.
The Department for Education commissioned Ofsted to carry out an independent review of the tutoring on offer, which included research visits to 63 schools between September 2021 and July 2022. These involved discussions with school leaders, teachers, tutors and pupils.
Researchers found the quality of tuition varied widely depending on the school or provider. The majority of schools they visited had opted to take a “school-led” approach rather than employing external tutors or mentors (see below).
Here Lee Owston, Ofsted's national director for education, discusses some of the key findings.
What was the overall picture of the quality of tutoring in schools?
In more than half of the schools we visited, we found the tutoring pupils were receiving was strong. In these schools, tutoring was well-planned and implemented with the content covered directly supporting the classroom curriculum. In a minority of schools – 10 out of 63 – tutoring was haphazard and poorly planned. These schools had not understood the purpose of having small tutoring groups and frequent sessions.
What are your main concerns around the quality of tutoring in schools?
Most schools we visited lacked a system to assess properly the tutoring they were giving and so did not know whether it was working or not. In schools that prioritised assessment, tutors and class teachers could immediately see when pupils had made progress, which meant they could determine whether a pupil had sufficiently caught up and no longer required tuition. This meant schools could allocate remaining time to other pupils who could benefit. Likewise, if tutored pupils were still struggling, they could stay in the sessions for longer.
What did the research find out when it comes to selecting pupils for tutoring – what kind of strategies work best?
The research found stronger schools used a range of information to prioritise pupils for tuition. While they typically focused on pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, these schools used wider assessments, supplemented by teachers’ knowledge, to identify the pupils who could benefit most from tuition.
What about the size of groups for tutoring – is smaller always better?
Funding for the National Tutoring Programme was for groups of six pupils maximum. This is because evidence suggests that once the size of tuition groups exceeds a certain threshold – usually 6 or 7 pupils – there is a noticeable reduction in how effective the tutoring is.
Research suggests that both one-to-one and small-group tuition are effective in providing pupils who have fallen behind with more instruction time. We often heard that smaller groups helped pupils to feel less shy in explaining where they were “stuck”. This is because in a small group there is the opportunity to engage in dialogue with the tutor more easily than in a typical class size. These pupils were then more confident when they returned to class sessions, especially in raising their hands to answer questions and asking for more help when necessary.
Did inspectors identify any keys to success when it came to the timing of sessions and scheduling tutoring to avoid disruption to pupils’ learning?
We know that some school leaders, particularly in primary schools, found it difficult to extend the school day for tutoring so many of the sessions were held during regular lesson times. Sessions before and after school and at weekends were more common in secondary schools. Other schools used a mixture of both during and after the school day to provide tuition.
When tutoring took place during the school day, in the better schools, leaders put mitigations in place to minimise the impact of tuition on other lessons and extra-curricular activities. Mitigations included flexible tutoring times and shortening the length of tuition sessions.
Should tutoring be delivered by qualified teachers?
Inspectors observed that tuition provided by qualified teachers was generally more effective than tutoring provided by non-qualified teachers. This is because the tuition draws upon teachers’ subject knowledge – particularly what pupils need to know, the quality of their pedagogy and their understanding of the school context and pupils’ needs.
Why is communication between tutors and teachers so important?
Regular communication between tutors and teachers ensures that sessions are purposefully planned and that they align with the school's curriculum. Tutors and teachers who were in regular contact with each other told us that they valued this time. They regarded it as a crucial part of helping pupils to catch up.
What is the role of the curriculum as the basis for tutoring programmes?
A well-considered and constructed curriculum must already be in place if tuition is going to help pupils to catch up. Teachers and tutors can then use the curriculum to identify the core knowledge that pupils have either missed, or do not fully understand, and make sure this is covered in tutoring sessions.
How will Ofsted inspectors look at tutoring as part of regular school inspections?
Where a school is directly using tutors, inspectors will consider how the tutoring supports the aims of the school curriculum, rather than evaluating the quality of the tutoring itself. The use of tutors will be integrated into the evaluation of both the quality of education and leadership and management, rather than being inspected separately.
WHAT IS THE NATIONAL TUTORING PROGRAMME?
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The National Tutoring Programme provides primary and secondary schools in England with funding to spend on targeted academic support delivered by trained tutors and mentors.
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The programme has evolved since its launch. In the 2022/23 academic year, £349m will go to schools to provide tutoring to those that need it most.
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Subsidised tutoring can be provided in one of three ways. Schools can use external tutors provided by tuition partners who have been quality checked by the Department for Education. They can employ specially trained academic mentors, who are full-time, in-house staff members whose role is to provide intensive support to pupils in a specific subject area. Or schools can use their own staff – who may already be working for the school or be hired for the purpose and might include retired teachers, supply teachers, support staff and others. School-appointed tutors get training through the programme.
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The funding for 2022/23 is intended to cover 60 per cent of the cost of tuition with schools making up the rest from pupil premium funding or their core budgets.
Source: National Tutoring Programme: guidance for schools 2022 to 2023, Department for Education
INSPECTION SHORTS
EDUCATION
Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission have published guidance for a series of visits that will focus on the quality of alternative education provision. The visits are the first to be carried out under new arrangements for inspecting local provision for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). These will not result in an inspection judgment but will help identify good practice as well as any concerns about the way the SEND system operates. The findings will be published in the autumn.
EARLY YEARS
Inspectors do not expect to see reams of paperwork when visiting early years settings and may prefer to talk through plans rather than looking at them on paper, says Ofsted's principal officer for early education. While the Early Years Foundation Stage sets out the information settings must record, HM Inspector Wendy Ratcliff stressed providers were free to document this in any way they liked. “We’ve told inspectors not to ask to see paperwork unnecessarily,” she wrote on Ofsted's early years blog.
EDUCATION
Ofsted has set out how it will carry out checks of full-time providers of online education who apply to join a new accreditation scheme. The Online Education Accreditation Scheme, launched by the Department for Education, is a non-statutory scheme that applies to online education services for children in England. Ofsted will carry out suitability checks on proprietors and assess whether providers meet set standards.
YOUTH JUSTICE
Many children in custody still spend too much time in their cells, especially at weekends, according to a report by HM Inspectorate of Prisons. The analysis based on surveys of young inmates shows about 80 per cent living in young offender institutions (YOIs) spend more than two hours out of their cells on weekdays but this drops to 35 per cent at weekends. At Cookham Wood YOI just 15 per cent of young people surveyed said they were able to spend more than two hours out of their cells at weekends.
SOCIAL CARE
Children's services in Wandsworth have been upgraded to “good” by Ofsted. Inspectors, who visited the London borough in November 2022, found the majority of children and families receive the right support at the right time and the views of children in care and care leavers are taken into account when making decisions. However, they said further improvements were needed when it came to work with homeless young people. The department was previously rated “requires improvement” after its last inspection in 2018.
