School Led Tutoring - Data
The Department for Education (DfE) collect data on the uptake of school led tutoring approximately every four weeks through the Educational Setting Status form. The questions asked are:
- Is your school currently using the School-Led Tutoring grant to provide tuition?
- Since the beginning of the Autumn term, how many pupils have received tuition through the School-Led Tutoring grant in total?
- Since the beginning of the Autumn term, how many pupil hours of tuition have been delivered through the School-Led Tutoring grant in total?
The date of the form used to inform our statistical publications is indicated in the release. This is a non-compulsory survey which means not every school responds.
A small number of outliers were removed. For example, where schools had reported delivery of unfeasibly high average numbers of hours of tutoring per pupil or an unfeasible high number of pupils. Such schools are still treated as participating in SLT.
For the release on the 31st March 2022, we tightened up our criteria for outliers, compared to previous ad-hoc releases. This reduced the estimated starts on courses by pupils for school led tutoring by around 7%.
Previously, we have not found that responding and non-responding schools are significantly different in characteristics (for example size, phase, location). As such we did not feel it was necessary or appropriate to make any adjustment for non-response bias. This is consistent with how other data from the Educational Settings Status form is currently reported, for example absence rates. However, that does not mean that we can rule out the risk of non-response bias in these estimates.
We will review whether there is a need for non-response corrections once we receive school census data which can be directly compared to the Educational Setting Status form responses. If appropriate, we will update this methodology.
School Led Tutoring – Starts on Courses by Pupils
We report estimates of the number of starts on courses made by pupils based on schools’ responses to the Educational Setting Status form. We have assumed that the average number of pupils receiving tutoring at non-responding schools is equal to the average number of pupils receiving tutoring at responding schools.
We have to infer what non-responding schools are doing from the sample of responding schools, therefore estimates are uncertain. This uncertainty will increase as the response rate falls and as the population size falls. As such, we have greater confidence in our national estimates, which are based on a relatively large group of schools, than in our local authority estimates, which are based on a much smaller group. Local Authority estimates should be treated with caution, particularly when comparing against previous estimates.
Starting with the May 2022 publication, to be transparent and give an indication of the uncertainty, we have included the number of schools that responded to the Educational Setting Status form and the response rate next to every School Led Tutoring estimate. In line with DfE Statistics on “Attendance in education and early years settings during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic”, we have also flagged School Led Tutoring estimates for Regions and Local Authorities where the estimate is:
- Based on 10 or less responding schools, or
- Based on a response rate of 50 per cent or less.
The flags are provided in the downloadable data tables. They act as a guide to users as to where the uncertainty of the estimates may be higher, although they should not interpreted as hard rules on data quality. There will always be some variability in estimates calculated from a sample of schools.
For school led tutoring, we receive data on the number of pupils undertaking tutoring at each school. To make these figures consistent with those we receive for tuition partners and academic mentors (where pupils can undertake multiple courses of tutoring) we have additionally estimated how many course starts have been undertaken by these pupils.
To do this, we review evidence on the numbers of hours of tutoring reported by schools. In some cases, pupils have received more than 15 hours of tutoring, meaning that they have in effect started more than one 15-hour course of tutoring. For example, some schools reported an average of more than 15 hours per pupil being delivered since the start of the academic year, meaning that at least some pupils must have received more than 15 hours of tutoring. This could be because they are receiving tutoring in multiple subjects, or because they are receiving intensive tutoring in one subject which has totalled more than 15 hours.
We have estimated how many pupils this affects by assuming that tutored pupils at each school have received the average number of hours of tutoring for that school. We then find the percentage of schools where the average pupil is receiving more than 15 hours tutoring. We apply this proportion to the estimated number of pupils receiving school led tutoring to estimate starts on courses by pupils. This ratio is applied nationally, rather than calculated separately for each Region and Local Authority.
This figure for starts on course by pupils may contain some duplication of individual pupils, whereby a pupil is counted more than once if they have received more than one package of tutoring.
School Led Tutoring – School Participation
Using the Educational Setting Status data, we estimate the total number of schools doing SLT based on that data and then calculate this as a percentage of all state-funded schools. Not all schools receive funding for school led tutoring but all schools are included in the calculation of the percentage.
As with the estimate for starts on courses by pupils on School Led Tutoring, we have included information about the Educational Settings Status responses and flags to indicate where Regional and Local Authority estimates may be less reliable. We started doing this in May 2022.
