Register your interest for the National Tutoring Programme through Zen

The National Tutoring Programme (NTP) provides additional support to schools to help disadvantaged pupils whose education has been most affected by school closures. On 31st October, a list of approved suppliers will be announced with tutoring eligible to begin from 1st November.

Schools will be able to access tuition to support pupils. The NTP will subsidise tuition by 75%, meaning schools only need to pay 25% of the cost of tutoring. Tutoring must be bought in blocks of 15 hours and the NTP highly encourages in-person tutoring to be on a 1:1 or up to 1:3 tutor:pupil ratio.

Our proposal to the NTP is to provide qualified teachers to deliver in-person lessons during the school day for up to 3 pupils at a time. As a Social Enterprise we provide exceptional value for money whilst paying our tutors a fair rate.

The NTP doesn’t specify the background of tutors and we expect organisations with a wide variety of delivery models will apply. Tutors can be professional tutors, university pupils or qualified teachers.

Studies provided by the EEF and NTP show experienced, trained and qualified teachers are twice as effective as compared with other tutors. This is why tutors provided by Zen for the NTP will overwhelmingly be qualified teachers. Our tutors will work closely with class teachers and schools to ensure they support classroom learning and focus on the key areas where pupils need help.

The vast majority of our tutors will be qualified and experienced teachers, including those who are experienced in intervention support. We have also developed a training programme for all our tutors based on the research evidence provided by EEF and The Sutton Trust.

We have a rigorous selection process for all our tutors who will either be qualified teachers, or for specialist roles, have extensive experience working with pupils in a special school setting (e.g. a Teaching Assistant with extensive experience & training in Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD)). We use competency assessments and interviews designed by senior educators and our Zen Educate Advisers. We conduct thorough statutory safeguarding checks according to the Safer Recruitment requirements in the Keeping Children Safe in Education 2020 (KCSIE) guidelines. All our tutors have to pass the required safeguarding checks and assessments before they are eligible to work with us.

We’ll listen and talk with you about what you want and how we can most usefully work with you. We want to ensure our tutors understand the needs of your pupils and how they can be supported to learn. Tutoring may take the form of consolidating learning and embedding particular skills, or explicit teaching curriculum of areas where there are gaps in knowledge. It may be useful to share pupil profiles with tutors at your school so they know how to support individual pupils. Tutors will work within the SEN Code of Practice using the Graduated Approach of Assess, Plan, Do, Review. Good communication and collaboration between tutors, schools and Zen Educate will be at the heart of making the NTP successful.

EEF guidance summarising the impact of school closures on attainment shows multiple disadvantages can increase barriers to learning. Some of the key drivers of the disadvantage gap include family stress, the home learning environment and community disadvantages and pressures. Online tuition is unlikely to meet the specific learning needs of many children who need tutoring support. Our tutoring will be in-person and on-site during the school day as the research shows this is likely to have good engagement and is most effective in helping pupils learn.

The NTP are subsidising tutoring by 75% so although our tuition costs are approximately £35 an hour, with the subsidy schools will be purchasing a 1 hour tutor session for around only £8.75. As we will be tutoring groups of three pupils at a time, this means schools will only pay approximately £2.90 per pupil per session. Schools need to purchase blocks of 15 hours of tutoring to be eligible for the NTP subsidy.

NTP Tuition Partners will be targeted to reach disadvantaged pupils eligible for Pupil Premium funding. However, teachers and school leaders will be able to exercise their professional judgement to determine which pupils are in most need of support.