Commenting on a new report from the Commons Education Select Committee on pandemic recovery and the National Tutoring Programme (NTP), Nick Brook, deputy general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said:

"Well before the pandemic hit, the gap in attainment between children from wealthy and poor families had stopped closing. Nearly 18 months of progress already separated pupils from the poorest communities from their more affluent peers. As this report powerfully highlights, an already bad situation will have been made all the worse by the impact of Covid.

"High quality tutoring, targeted towards disadvantaged pupils, has enormous potential for narrowing the achievement gap between rich and poor. The appetite for tutoring from schools is there, but confused messaging and bureaucratic processes have made schools hesitant to engage with the NTP. What should have been simple was made complex. What should have been transformational has become transactional.

"The government's tutoring revolution risks stalling unless more is done to ensure that high quality, easy-to-access tutoring support is available to every school, for all pupils that need it, in every single part of the country."