The Small Print
We know it can be boring, but it’s important to read the small print and see how we reached our conclusions.
Firstly, here are our Policies and Terms and Conditions if you need them:
Otherwise, you will be here to understand our thoughts on the NTP and askOLA, as follows:
For the Comparison Widget
We used the EEF report published in October 2022 to reference and source all of our data: https://d2tic4wvo1iusb.cloudfront.net/documents/projects/Evaluation-Report-Implementation-and-process-evaluation.pdf?v=1667398029
This is the only full-year, validated research on the NTP which has been produced by the EEF, and whilst it would be more favourable to askOLA to use the current year subsidy % for the NTP (60% versus 75%) we have based our numbers on the higher subsidy to be prudent, and to reflect the assumptions in the Report.
The Report showed that 6,082 schools participated in year 1 with around 230,000 pupils receiving some level of tuition. On average therefore, each school supported 38 pupils.
To derive the total net NTP estimated spend by school, we calculated the cost after DfE subsidies are applied for an average school, the per pupil figure being £119.65 or for 38 NTP pupils a net cost of £4,546.70 per school. We then added to the average cost per school of NTP implementation of £3,976.66 (ref: “Table 15: Recurring monetary costs to schools—average cost per school”). The total net cost after subsidy is £8,523.36, an average per pupil cost of £242.30.
Generally, pupils attended for 9 hours on average (slightly less actually) meaning that the true net cost per hour per pupil was just under £25. In broad terms the initial expected cost of £7.98 is close to three times greater than schools would have budgeted due mainly to high levels of pupil non-attendance and significant extra workload for Heads, the senior leadership team and teaching staff.
Schools pay for 15 hour blocks of tuition and as only 9 hours were utilised the ‘wasted spend’ equates to 40% of the overall committed funding. This is the main weakness of the NTP model.
Analysis of the Evaluation Report shows that c50% of all students on Pupil Premium (Free School Meals) typically participated in the NTP. The percentage was less in the Primary sector.
Taking a secondary school with with 1200 pupils and 45% on FSM as an example, 540 pupils qualify and half would be placed therefore on the NTP given the Evaluation Report analysis. The net cost to such a school for the NTP intervention to support 270 young people would be £65,421 funded from Pupil Premium or Catch-Up Premium mostly.
40% of the committed spend would be wasted on average simply through non-attendance. This is a prudent number given other negative impacts not taken into account. In this example, this means £26,168 in cash has been paid for services not utilised.
This data is the basis upon which we calculate the potential savings figure on the comparison widget on our website.
To equate this to a cost on askOLA we have taken our most popular package at £2.50 – not our cheapest option at £1.50 – to show the most typical comparison cost. The numbers assume that pupils take up a full 15 hours of provision (not 9 as per the NTP) to again be prudent.
Finally, in the last column we show how many pupils could be added for the same net spend on the NTP.
For the “90% Cheaper than the NTP” claim
We selected 10 providers from the approved Tuition Partners list per the table below:
Source Links:
Tute: National-Tutoring-Programme-FAQs.pdf (tute.com)
TLC Live: National Tutoring Programme partner | AY 21/22 | TLC LIVE
EM Tutor: National Tutoring Programme | EM Tuition
My Tutor: Myt_Nutshell-National-Tutoring-Programme-NTP.pdf (schoolsandacademiesshow.co.uk)
Bright Heart: National Tutoring Programme (NTP) | Tuition Partner | SEN Agency (brightheart.co.uk)
Pearson: Pearson-Tutoring-Funding-options-22-23.pdf
Third Space Learning: National Tutoring Programme: Guide For Schools (2022/23 Update) (thirdspacelearning.com)
Fledge Tuition: National Tutoring Programme — Fledge Tuition
Prospero Teaching: Prospero Teaching becomes National Tutoring Programme Tuition Partner
Engage Education: National Tutoring Programme – Engage Education (engage-education.com)
The average cost per lesson from these Partners totalled £17.06 per hour. In the 2022 academic year schools receive a subsidy to this cost of £9.92, or 60% of the gross costs. The net cost is hence £7.14. Ignoring hidden costs as there will be some for askOLA also, this means that schools could buy 10 hours of askOLA provision for the same investment. In other words, askOLA is 90% cheaper than the NTP.