Exclusive: National Tutoring Programme costing the taxpayer up to £100 an hour, as funding to tuition agencies in some cases vastly exceeds tutor pay. https://www.educationuncovered.co.uk/news/149601/national-tutoring-programme-costing-the-taxpayer-up-to-100-an-hour-as-funding-to-tuition-agencies-in-some-cases-vastly-exceeds-tutor-pay.thtml

I’ve looked at the prices being charged schools through the National Tutoring Programme, then worked out the total public cost, given that DfE seemingly funds tuition orgs at 3x the price to schools.

Some findings are striking: cost to the taxpayer works out at £80/hour in case of offerings from five tutoring orgs, even though one is advertising for tutors at as low as £16/hour. Two orgs offer tuition costing £53 and £60 per hour in total, tho volunteers are tutoring.

Not clear, then, that entire DfE subsidy is being passed on to schools. If it were, perhaps more pupils could be helped.
Few would quibble with idea of extra tuition for disadvantaged pupils.But is funding it in this way, with subsidies seemingly going via tutoring orgs,right?

Btw, around two thirds of the orgs approved by the National Tutoring Programme to provide tuition are private firms, with a lot of variation in size. The remainder are charities, a university and a local authority.

Full piece for my website @EduUncovered, including a league table of the National Tutoring Programme’s costs to schools and the taxpayer by provider, is here: https://www.educationuncovered.co.uk/news/149601/national-tutoring-programme-costing-the-taxpayer-up-to-100-an-hour-as-funding-to-tuition-agencies-in-some-cases-vastly-exceeds-tutor-pay.thtml

By the way, it would be good to hear from tutoring organisations directly about this. But they seem not allowed to speak to the media about the National Tutoring Programme-comms being routed through the NTP itself.