NTP: What lessons can we learn from year one?

The national tutoring programme (NTP) was heralded by Boris Johnson as the government’s great education leveller after the mass school closures of the Covid pandemic. I was one of the policy’s most vocal champions and even helped create the toolkit that so powerfully backed its use. But unsurprisingly, it turned out to be a little more complicated than the former PM’s rhetoric made out.

This is one of the biggest education experiments ever conducted in England’s schools, and the long-awaited evaluation of its rapid roll-out is essential reading for all who still believe targeted tuition can be a powerful equalising force for poorer pupils. The NFER report reveals nothing if not just how difficult that ambition is, even for the best-evidenced bets.