The Headlines

The education of millions of children and young adults around the world suffered during the COVID pandemic, with achievement gaps between the rich and poor widening substantially. In the UK, additional state-sponsored tutoring was introduced for the most disadvantaged as one response, and now debate is raging about whether it should become a permanent feature of the education system.

Achievement gaps in schools and universities existed long before the pandemic, but the additional impact of COVID continues to be felt. In the UK, a recent report by the Educational Policy Institute found that the achievement gap among 16-year-olds was still growing, amounting to 18.6 months’ difference between the most and least advantaged. Disadvantaged 16-19 year olds were 3.2 grades behind their peers across their best three subjects in GCSE examinations in 2023 – 1.1 months more than in 2019 and the greatest disparity since 2012.

In a survey of almost 7,000 teachers in England by ParentPay, an online payment system used by schools, almost a quarter (24 percent) said the current GCSE cohort, two years away from university entrance, was the worst affected by pandemic-related learning gaps.

At the same time, according to the social mobility charity, the Sutton Trust, one in five teenagers educated at state schools who took their GCSEs last year were privately tutored. While tutoring was once reserved for children preparing for the 11-plus grammar school tests or those who struggle with a particular subject, it has become a mainstream option for middle-class children throughout their education. Extra tuition is common for even the brightest pupils in order to secure the grades needed for a place at a top university.

The Sutton Trust is one of a number of organisations arguing for a revival of the National Tutoring Programme (NTP), the Government initiative launched in 2020 to help disadvantaged pupils recover from the disruption to their education during the pandemic. Research by the trust in 2023 found that the NTP had a significant impact on the distribution of tutoring among different sectors of the population, with 41 percent of year 11 pupils being offered some kind of school tutoring in 2020/21, compared to only 9 percent having private tutoring at that time.

The research also found that while the most deprived areas had the lowest rates of private tutoring, through the NTP they came to have the highest rates of school tutoring. Government funding for the NTP, which ended last August, was expected from the outset to reduce by 25 percent each year. But Kevin Latham, the trust’s Research and Policy Manager, described the Government’s refusal to extend the scheme as “extremely short-sighted”. He added: “Now is absolutely not the time to be abandoning one of the few educational interventions in recent years with the prospect of truly addressing longstanding educational inequality.”

Research from the Education Endowment Foundation shows that there was an average learning loss of 2 to 3.5 months in primary reading and maths as a result of pandemic-related disruption. Further analysis published by the Nuffield found that the effects of COVID-related disruption in education will impact children well into the 2030s, leading social mobility levels to decline by up to 15 percent over the next decade. Lacking sufficient school grades remains one of the biggest barriers to further study in higher education.

A new report by the think tank Public First – Past lessons, future vision: evolving state funded tutoring for the future – finds that schools and colleges have struggled to maintain tutoring beyond the end of the dedicated Government funding, despite strong evidence for its benefits and its popularity among parents. The NTP surpassed expectations by providing more than 6 million courses over its four years, boosting results and winning support among initially sceptical teachers. But schools and colleges face competing pressures on their budgets and have been unable to maintain sessions.

Jonathan Symons, who led the research as Education Partner at Public First, said at the launch of the report that there remained a difference of opinion on whether tutoring was a response to the pandemic or a long-term policy. With co-authors Sally Burtonshaw and Will Yates, he put the case for a new scheme with programmes of at least 12 hours duration, available for all age groups but restricted to English and maths since wider coverage of subjects was not considered realistic. He added: “Tutoring is one of the things I am most passionate about. I have seen it happen and the evaluation shows that it works.”

The Labour government has promised action to assist those hardest hit by the pandemic and to widen entry to higher education, but it has stressed that the NTP was a four-year, time-limited scheme. In the meantime, some universities and student unions have stepped in to provide partial replacements. The University of Exeter, in particular, has established what it described as a “low-cost, scalable and sustainable” tutoring scheme that is being taken up by other institutions.

Exeter pairs undergraduates with 12 and 13-year-olds to improve their literacy skills. Students receive academic credit for their work and are paid. The literacy assessment scores of children who took part in the current academic year increased by an average of over 25 percent following the intervention. Lee Elliot Major, Exeter’s Professor of Social Mobility and a member of the South-West Social Mobility Commission, which helps to fund the initiative, said: “This programme shows pairing university students and pupils can be a ‘win-win-win model’ – boosting attainment amongst less advantaged children, giving undergraduate students invaluable life experience and skills and helping to revitalise local communities. We are pleased to see evidence of the impact on children’s attainment through this external evaluation.”