Education recovery cash totalling £226 million went unspent, a report has found, renewing calls that ministers’ plans to embed tutoring in schools while withdrawing subsidies is “unsustainable”.
The National Audit Office assessed the value-for-money of the £3.5 billion of Department for Education funding designated to help pupils catch up.
The public spending watchdog found overall that children are “making progress” in recovering lost learning, however disadvantaged pupils remain further behind compared to their peers.
But auditors found a £226 million underspend on the recovery funding provided up until the end of the 2021-22 financial year.
This is about 14 per cent of the “available funding”, NAO said.
NAO would not provide a breakdown, but part of this will be a £124 million underspend on 2021 summer schools, which had low take up.
The overall figure is also likely “understated” as it does not take into account the unused National Tutoring Programme funding DfE is clawing back, the NAO said.
Schools Week reported early estimates that this could be more than £100 million. But the government is now negotiating with schools who say clawback figures are incorrect, meaning the actual figure could be lower.
Ministers want to “embed” tutoring in schools to address low attainment, even after the subsidy stops at the end of 2023-24 academic year.
Schools Week has reported how schools are struggling with having to pay larger contributions to tutoring as the government subsidy tapers off. The government provides 60 per cent towards tutoring this year, dropping to 25 per cent next year.
DfE told to model financial sustainability of tutoring
The NAO now recommends DfE draw up a model looking at the impact of withdrawing the recovery premium and subsidy to the NTP.
It should “assess whether tutoring in schools is financially sustainable given DfE’s objective for tutoring to become embedded in the school system”.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of school leaders’ union ASCL, said the NTP will be “hampered” by the “simply unsustainable” funding and soaring inflation costs.
“It was disadvantaged children that were hardest hit by the pandemic, and government support for their education recovery has been inadequate.”
Paul Whiteman, general secretary at NAHT heads’ union, added recovery efforts could be “undermined further” when the subsidy ends.
NAO’s report revealed the DfE does not know the number of individual pupils supported by the NTP, only how many courses were taken.
It also found there was “little incentive” for academic mentors – one of the three NTP streams – to record their work while the contract was run by HR firm Randstad last year. This resulted in “gaps in the data about this scheme”.
DfE must remain ‘focused’ on catch-up
Meanwhile, the NAO also recommends DfE report regularly on how it will achieve its schools white paper ambitions, including that 90 per cent of children by 2030 leave primary school with the expected standard in reading, writing and maths.
This fell to 59 per cent last year. The disadvantage gap at primary and secondary is also at its widest in 10 years.
Meg Hillier, chair of the Parliamentary public accounts committee, said the long-term cost of failing to close the gap is “huge, for pupils and wider society. DfE has an ongoing duty to the children who missed out on education and continue to pay the price”.
Gareth Davies, head of NAO, said it was “concerning” learning loss remains greater for disadvantaged pupils, adding: “It is vital that the Department maintains its focus on education recovery in the coming years to help all children to catch up and to close the attainment gap between disadvantaged and other pupils.”
A DfE spokesperson said “whilst we’re pleased to see that today’s findings indicate that children are making progress, we know that there is more to do, including working to close the disadvantage attainment gap”.
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