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Catch-up tutoring scheme must better target disadvantaged pupils, report warns

2 mins read Education Coronavirus
A government tutoring scheme aimed at helping pupils to catch-up on education missed during the Covid-19 pandemic needs to improve its targeting of disadvantaged pupils to ensure it is effective, according to researchers.
The scheme is failing to target students eligible for the pupil premium, research finds. Picture: AdobeStock/Freedomz
The scheme is failing to target students eligible for the pupil premium, research finds. Picture: AdobeStock/Freedomz

The call has been made following evaluation of the first year of the National Tutoring Programme, which found that despite extra support being offered to students “the disadvantage gap remains wide”.

The evaluation warns that tutoring support is failing to target many of the most disadvantaged pupils in schools.

Pupils eligible for pupil premium funding and free school meals are among groups the programme had been aimed at supporting when it launched.

But the scheme has no targets for pupil premium participation and instead disadvantaged young people are only “expected to be a key participant group”.

Researchers are recommending that future tutoring programmes need to “either clearly define for whom they are designed or acknowledge that schools may have different views about which of their pupils most need and would benefit from tuition”.

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