As part of the Department for Education’s (DfE)’s education recovery plan, the Secretary of State for Education is providing financial assistance to eligible local authorities, for their maintained schools, and academy trusts. This is in accordance with section 14 of the Education Act 2002, in the form of the school-led tutoring grant.
This grant will give schools the flexibility in determining how best to provide tutoring intervention to support catch-up for lost education due to the coronavirus pandemic.
It entails the staff costs of delivering tuition and cannot be used to cover other costs such as diagnostic tools, room hire, equipment, laptops, transport, stationery and record keeping.
All state-funded primary schools who are eligible for pupil premium will receive a school-led tutoring grant.
The school-led tutoring grant is to support disadvantaged pupils in catch-up learning and schools will select the pupils in need of support. This will focus on providing tuition to pupils eligible for pupil premium but also includes pupils with other types of disadvantage or additional needs. This includes special educational needs and disability (SEND) children who have a social worker, previously looked-after children, young carers and other vulnerable pupils.
However, if the school feels that a pupil who does not fall into these categories would benefit from catch-up tutoring, the funding can be used to provide this.
Future subsidies
In the academic year 2021 to 2022, the grant provided will cover 75% of the average cost of tutoring, based on a 15-hour package at a unit rate of £18 per hour.
In this academic year, 2022 to 2023 schools and academy trusts will be provided with a grant to cover 60% of the £18 unit cost.
In 2023 to 2024 the grant provided will cover 25% of the £18 unit cost.
Schools will need to factor in increasing contributions to school-led tutoring from other budget sources such as pupil premium funding.
All schools must complete the following data returns to maintain eligibility for funding:
- school-led tutoring data in the school census (once a term)
- an online form via the ESFA, that captures spend and final pupil numbers (once at the end of the academic year)
