The National Tutoring Programme has ended. What now?
The NTP finished in August 2024, after four years and just over six million subsidised tutoring courses, and nothing national has replaced it. If your child would have qualified, the help now comes from three places: what your school still funds, school-linked charities, and tutoring you pay for directly. Here is the honest picture, costs included.
The basics
What was the National Tutoring Programme?
Launched in November 2020, the NTP was England's pandemic catch-up scheme for tutoring: government money that subsidised small-group and one-to-one tuition arranged through schools, aimed especially at disadvantaged pupils. Delivery evolved over its life, from approved tuition partners and academic mentors towards school-led tutoring, where schools hired and deployed their own tutors.
The scale was genuinely large. Across four academic years the Department for Education counts 6,168,958 tutoring courses started through the programme, and in its peak year, 2021/22, 87.4% of state schools took part. For a while, tutoring stopped being a private purchase and became something schools simply did.
The basics
When and why did the NTP end?
It ended in August 2024, and the end was built in: this was time-limited recovery funding, and the subsidy stepped down each year until schools carried most of the cost themselves. The Department for Education's official statistics call 2023/24 the fourth and final year, and no ring-fenced tutoring funding has followed it.
| Year | Government subsidy | Participation |
|---|---|---|
| 2021/22 | 70% | 87.4% of schools took part |
| 2022/23 | 60% | 73.8% of schools took part |
| 2023/24 | 25% | 59.4% of schools took part. The fourth and final year |
Source: DfE National Tutoring Programme official statistics, final edition, December 2024. The programme also ran in 2020/21 under its original tuition-partner model.
Options now
What can parents do now the NTP has ended?
Three realistic routes, in the order worth trying them:
Ask the school what still runs
Plenty of schools kept tutoring going after the subsidy ended, funding it from existing budgets such as pupil premium. Ask directly: who qualifies, for which subjects, and how your child gets a place.
School-linked tutoring charities
Charities such as Action Tutoring continue to deliver tutoring for disadvantaged pupils through partner schools. Access runs through the school rather than parents, so the first step is the same conversation.
Private tutoring, costed honestly
One-to-one tutoring paid for directly, at a rate you can see before you commit. Typical UK market estimates: primary around £29/hr, GCSE around £38/hr, A-Level around £52/hr, with online sessions often cheaper.
Rate figures are publicly advertised market estimates, not a measured TutorLab dataset. The live directory shows each tutor's actual rate: see typical tutor rates across the UK.
Going private
If the private route is the one you take
The NTP's own lesson applies: regular, targeted sessions beat occasional ones, and the tutor should work from your child's actual gaps. On TutorLab you contact tutors directly and they keep their full rate, so the price you see is the whole price. Weigh it up first with is private tutoring worth it.
Parents
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FAQ
The NTP: common questions
What was the National Tutoring Programme?
A government-funded catch-up scheme in England, launched in November 2020 to help pupils recover learning lost during the pandemic. It subsidised small-group and one-to-one tuition arranged through schools, first via approved tuition partners and academic mentors, later mainly through school-led tutoring. Across its four years, the Department for Education counts 6,168,958 tutoring courses delivered.
When did the National Tutoring Programme end?
August 2024. The Department for Education's official statistics describe 2023/24 as the fourth and final year of the programme, and the final edition of the NTP statistics release was published in December 2024. Schools have received no ring-fenced national tutoring subsidy since.
Why did the NTP end?
It was time-limited pandemic recovery funding, and the subsidy was wound down by design: government covered 70% of tutoring costs in 2021/22, 60% in 2022/23, then 25% in 2023/24, with schools funding the balance. Funding was not renewed beyond the 2023/24 academic year, and school participation fell as the subsidy shrank, from 87.4% of schools in 2021/22 to 59.4% in the final year.
Is there a replacement for the National Tutoring Programme?
As of mid-2026 there is no ring-fenced national successor scheme. The Department for Education has pointed schools towards existing budgets, particularly pupil premium, to continue tutoring for the pupils who need it most. In practice provision now varies school by school, which is why the first question belongs to your school rather than to a government website.
What can I do now if my child needs the help the NTP provided?
Three routes. Ask the school what tutoring it still funds and who qualifies. Ask whether a tutoring charity works with the school, since organisations like Action Tutoring deliver through partner schools. And if you can fund it yourself, private one-to-one tutoring is the direct route: typical market rates run from around £29 an hour at primary to around £52 at A-Level, and a single term of weekly sessions aimed at named gaps is a sensible, bounded starting commitment.
Choosing a private tutor for the first time? Start with how to choose a tutor and the questions to ask before you hire.
The scheme ended. The need did not.
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