Education leaders have expressed disbelief that ministers will pay up to £4 million for a firm to run a national website to match schools with local tutors.
A website was launched this year for schools to find suitable tuition partners through the National Tutoring Programme.
The Department for Education has now awarded Transform – previously known as Engine – a contract of up to £4 million to manage the service.
The firm will support the DfE to “build and run the service” over the next two years.
The potential value is more than the £2.4 million Tribal is paid to quality assure the whole NTP.
Nick Brook, deputy general-secretary at heads’ union NAHT, said that schools would “understandably wonder” how this “can really be considered good value for money”.
“At a time when schools are being forced to make impossible choices of what to cut to balance the books, the news that DfE have spent such a considerable sum on a simple tutoring website is likely to be met with disbelief by many school leaders.”
The DfE said the funding was part of a Digital Outcome Specialist contract, which are “common across government and provide specialist digital support by supplying web design specialists, user-researchers and software developers”.
Tutors get few referrals through website
The government launched the “Find a Tuition Partner” website after Randstad was axed as the NTP provider last year and all tutoring money given directly to schools.
Previously, the now closed nationaltutoring.org.uk website had a list of tutors that schools could use.
On the new website, schools enter their postcode and which key stages and subjects they need support for before being given a list of tutors they can use in person and online.
Although it is hard to track, tutoring organisations told Schools Week that they’ve had few referrals through the website so far, with schools traditionally favouring bringing in their own tutors through the school-led route.
But schools can now only spend government catch-up cash when using quality-assured tutors.
A DfE spokesperson said: “Schools will rightly expect a high-quality digital service, which is why we have appointed Transform as our digital partner to maintain, iterate and develop the site to ensure it continues to provide value to school leaders over the next two years.”
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