25th August 2022

Changes to the National Tutoring Programme in 2022/23

The overall approach to the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) for the academic year 2022/23 is to provide £349 million of funding directly to schools and give schools the freedom to decide on the best tuition provision for their pupils. A priority of NTP is to embed tutoring as a permanent method of addressing low attainment and educational inequality.

For the academic year 2022/23, there will continue to be 3 types of subsidised tuition that schools can offer:

• Academic Mentors
•  Tuition Partners
• School-Led Tutoring

How will the funding be allocated?

State-funded schools will receive NTP funding over the course of the academic year to deliver tuition to their pupils. The funding can be used to cover 60% of the cost of tutoring, with schools targeting the tutoring offer towards their pupil premium cohort and paying the remaining 40% of the cost using their pupil premium or other core school budgets.

For the academic year 2022/23, the following NTP funding is provided:

• Mainstream schools will receive £162 per pupil premium -eligible pupil
• Non-mainstream schools will receive £423 per pupil premium -eligible pupil

To fully utilise their NTP funding, schools must be aware that a maximum hourly per pupil rate is applied. These are:

• £18 for mainstream schools, of which the Department for Education (DfE) subsidy will be £10.80 (60%)
• £47 for non-mainstream schools, of which the DfE subsidy will be £28.20 (60%)

Schools will have the flexibility to decide how to use their NTP funding. Schools could use the funding to pay for salaried, in-house academic mentors, their own existing staff or engage with a Tuition Partner that has been quality assured by the DfE. As disadvantaged pupils have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, schools should strongly consider targeting their tutoring offer to pupils who are eligible for pupil premium.

Schools should also note that if they want to use a service and not their own staff, they can only use NTP funding on quality-assured Tuition Partners. 

What is available?

The NTP is available to pupils in years 1 to 11, across all state-funded schools. In primary schools, tutoring can be accessed in mathematics, English and science. In secondary schools, tutoring can be accessed in mathematics, English, science, humanities and modern foreign languages. Based on previous evidence, group sizes of 1:3 are recommended although group sizes can be made up to 1:6. Tuition courses should be 12-15 hours in length in order to have a meaningful impact on pupil attainment. Courses can be made longer when needed.

Schools should prioritise their pupil premium cohort to receive tutoring and consider offering tutoring to other pupils where appropriate. Depending on the most suitable method of delivery, tuition can be accessed either face-to-face or online. 

What Engage Education can do for you

Engage Education are a quality assured NTP Tuition Partner and has started working as an approved Tuition Partner on the NTP Programme in September 2021. Our tutors are predominantly qualified teachers, with qualified teacher status (QTS). They all meet our stringent compliance, background and qualification checks and are all required to complete our own compulsory tuition training before working with any school. Our specialist tutors can provide tuition in mathematics, English, science, humanities and modern foreign languages. We have tutors who are SEND specialists as well as specialists in English as an additional language (EAL) and we offer both face-to-face and online tuition. 

We aim to work closely with schools to understand the needs of your pupils and match tutors to your tuition objectives. We offer schools the opportunity to interview our tutors and we have found that this helps to ensure pupils are supported by an appropriately matched tutor who is in the best position to impact pupil attainment. 

Supporting pupils with SEND

Many of our tutors are qualified SEND specialists. Our tutors will work closely with pupils with SEND to adapt tuition sessions to ensure they need additional needs. Whilst the majority of the tuition we support is 1:3, we do offer smaller group sizes of 1:1 or 1:2 where appropriate. 

Where applicable, tuition provision can be aligned with the requirements set out in the pupil’s education, health and care plan (EHCP) to ensure tuition is tailored to the individual needs of each pupil. 

The feedback we’ve received about our tutors

“Pupils have been supported to make progress in reading and maths. Our tutor has focused her teaching on targets set by the school and this has enabled us to reduce gaps in knowledge.”

“Confidence has greatly increased. This has been a very positive outcome for ALL children.”

Our dedicated NTP team has helped over 6,000 pupils complete tuition programmes in over 150 different schools. Book an NTP consultation and see how we can help you.

For further information on the changes made to NTP, please visit:

Policy paper- National tutoring programme (NTP) Updates 26 May 2022

National Tutoring Programme: guidance for schools 2022 to 2023