National Tutoring Programme Year 3: Impact Evaluation
27 September 2024
The National Tutoring Programme (NTP) was introduced in the 2020-21 academic year and aimed to support socioeconomically disadvantaged pupils to recover lost learning and help close the attainment gap for these pupils. With the immediate aftermath of the pandemic over, the focus of the NTP later shifted towards tackling the persistent socioeconomic attainment gap.
This report summarises the findings from research undertaken for the Department for Education (DfE) to evaluate the impact of the third year of the NTP on English and maths outcomes for pupils in Key Stages 2 and 4. It also explored:
- Whether impact varied according to the number of tutoring hours received
- Any differences in impact of according to pupil characteristics
- The longer-term impact of participating in the NTP in its second year.
Key Findings
For Key Stage 2
- Participation in the NTP was associated with small improvements in English and maths outcomes.
- Improvements in maths were larger and more consistent than in English.
- Maths improvements related to school led tutoring in maths were still detectable one year later.
- All these improvements equated to one months’ additional progress or less.
For Key Stage 4
- There was more limited evidence that the NTP may be associated with very small improvements in English and maths outcomes.
- These improvements equated to less than one months’ additional progress.
- There was no evidence of sustained improvements in either maths or English.
- Due to limitations with the analysis, the true impact of the NTP is likely to be greater than these results suggest.
Additional key findings
- An optimum number of tutoring hours for greatest impact is likely to lie above 20 hours per pupil.
- There is some evidence that the NTP had a very small additional benefit for pupil premium pupils and pupils with prior low attainment.