18 Monday May 2 2022 | the times
News
Zahawi urges schools to
take up tutoring scheme
Nadhim Zahawi, the education secre-
tary, is writing to schools to urge them
to use the government’s flagship
national tutoring programme.
Parents will also be able to access da-
ta on how their child’s school is using
the scheme. The Department for Edu-
cation has said it will share this data
with the schools inspectorate Ofsted.
The tutoring programme has previ-
ously been criticised as “dysfunctional”
after schools and tuition providers re-
ported problems with the online portal
of Randstad, the Dutch human resour-
ces company awarded £25.4 million to
run the scheme in May last year.
Just over 100,000 tuition courses
were started through Randstad during
the 2021-22 academic year. Overall,
more than a million tuition courses
started, but most of these were through
the schools-led tuition route, where
schools were awarded funding to spend
on tuition directly.
In March, Randstad lost the contract
for next year, with the Department for
Education (DfE) announcing that
schools would receive direct funds fortutoring to “simplify” the programme.
Many schools are still not using the
scheme, intended to be part of the gov-
ernment’s Covid recovery catch-up
plans. The DfE said that it estimated
that 40 per cent of schools were yet to
offer any tutoring sessions through the
scheme during this academic year.
The government has said the tutor-
ing will help reach a target of 90 per
cent of pupils leaving primary school to
meet expected literacy and numeracy
targets by 2030, as set out in the Level-
ling Up paper.
A “parent pledge” announced in the
schools white paper also assured
parents that any child falling behind in
English and maths would be given tar-
geted support.
In his letter to schools, Zahawi writes:
“I appeal now, in particular to those
schools that have not yet started to offer
tutoring, to make sure that you do so as
soon as possible this term — do not
miss out on an opportunity to help
pupils who could benefit now.”
A total of £349 million has been allo-
cated for the scheme for 2022-23.SAM LANGLOIS/ANIMAL NEWS AGENCYUniversities face
fines if they don’t
teach in person
Universities will be fined if they fail to
ensure students have face-to-face
teaching, the government has said.
Michelle Donelan, the universities
minister, said she wanted inspectors to
investigate staff attendance on campus.
Most universities say lecturers have
returned to campuses but individual
courses at various institutions are still
using online or “blended” methods. In
some cases, larger lectures are deliv-
ered remotely while students attend
tutorials.
Nadhim Zahawi, the education
secretary, told The Times earlier this
year he wanted all universities to set out
how much face-to-face teaching
students would get this autumn. He
challenged vice-chancellors to give
school-leavers detailed data, broken
down by course, rather than vague
intentions before they commit and pay
for degrees and accommodation.
He said there was no longer any
excuse for teaching remotely and that
online lectures should be scrapped.
Donelan said she wanted vice-chan-
cellors to take action about the
“stubborn minority” of lecturers who
were still working remotely.
“We’re all enjoying the freedoms that
the vaccine has enabled us to have,” she
told The Mail on Sunday. “Students and
lecturers will be going to the pub, going
out for meals, they’ll be going to parties,
going to weddings, probably concerts,
so it doesn’t actually make sense that
they can’t then be in a lecture theatre.
“I’ve not heard a reasonable ration-
ale for why we would want students to
be on a second track to the rest of the
population. I think it is really wrong.”
Institutions that have failed to return
to pre-pandemic levels of face-to-face
teaching could “potentially be fined or
even lose the ability to access money
from the student loan system”, she said.
“That would be the most serious
ramification but in the first instance
there would be fines and we would
expect their teaching methods tochange,” she said, adding that the UK
had some of the most “iconic universi-
ties in the world”.
Inspections will be carried out by the
Office for Students (OfS), after the
government set out its expectations in a
letter last month on strategic priorities.
The document said that concerns
about quality should be investigated,
adding: “Our expectation is that the
OfS should deploy this regulatory
intelligence to implement a visible and
effective inspections regime against the
other conditions of registration.”
It said this would involve on-site
inspections of up to 15 institutions next
year to “root out pockets of poor
provision and result in regulatory
action where appropriate”.
The letter added: “Through this
activity, we would expect the OfS to
focus on the following priorities — that
online learning should be used to
complement and enhance a student’s
learning experience, not to detract
from it, and the provision of sufficient
contact hours, particularly where this
has been flagged by intelligence from
students.”
Alistair Jarvis, chief executive of
Universities UK, which represents
vice-chancellors, said: “Universities
understand the value of face-to-face
teaching and that’s why in-person
teaching and learning is the main
method of delivering most courses at
most universities across the UK.
“Like every sector, the pandemic has
changed the way universities work,
with significant advances made in
digital teaching and learning.
“Students have been clear that these
developments help them learn, can
make the learning experience more
accessible and flexible and enhances
digital skills valued by employers.
Many universities have responded to
this positive student feedback by
including some digital learning
alongside in-person learning opportu-
nities.”
There’s no excuse for remote tuition,
leading article, page 27Nicola Woolcock Education EditorHaving a blast A pair of orcas, most commonly seen in May and June, have been spotted off Thurso in northern Scotland