The Covid-19 pandemic caused significant disruption to learning which will have a long-lasting effect on students and the education sector as a whole.
In their report released on schools closures in June 2020, the Education Endowment Foundation detailed three key findings:
1) School closures are likely to reverse progress made to narrow the 'attainment gap' in the last decade (i.e. the gap between those students who are advantaged and those who are disadvantaged);
2) Supporting effective remote learning will be important to reduce further negative effects after school closures;
3) Sustained support will be needed to help some students catch up on missed learning.
The National Tutoring Programme (NTP) is an initiative designed to support schools to address the impact of Covid-19 school closures on pupils’ learning. It was established as a response to the key emergency research summarised above and to administer the emergency catch-up funding made available by the UK government. To find out more about the NTP and for the most up-to-date information, please click on the link above.
Schools are able to access heavily subsidised tuition from an approved list of NTP partners, or identify their own tutors through the School-Led Tutoring route to reach as many disadvantaged pupils as possible. The list of approved suppliers can be found at: Approved Tuition Partners - NTP (nationaltutoring.org.uk).
EdPlace has provided the assessment and curriculum support element for seven of these approved partners, supporting nearly 30,000 NTP students in the UK. Our history of supporting parents by tracking and sharing highly-individualised student data made us ideally placed to do this; as our partners had the ability to accurately track how much progress the targeted students made as a result of their tuition. Also, as further school closures or access issues arose, our online system meant that these students did not fall further behind as tutoring moved online. To access a summary report of our assessment support for tutors in 20/21, please click here.
At EdPlace, we're passionate about reaching those students most in need. Our curriculum and assessment support of this project is making this happen. We're proud to be involved and making a small contribution to such an essential national initiative.
If you have any questions about our work supporting the NTP or you would like to find out more, please contact our friendly Customer Support Team via email at help@edplace.com or visit our NTP landing page by clicking here.