Study title

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has been leading the management of the Tuition Partners (TP) pillar of the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) in 2020/2021, funded as part of the government coronavirus catch-up package. The TP programme allows schools to access subsidised tuition from a list of 33 tuition partners, quality approved by the EEF, to support pupils who have missed out the most as a result of school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus is on supporting disadvantaged pupils, in particular those eligible for Pupil Premium, but with flexibility for schools to select those pupils who they feel were most in need of the support. The EEF commissioned the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) to run a reach and engagement nimble randomised controlled trial (RCT) with EM Tuition, an approved NTP Tuition Partner. The RCT explored the impact of two distinctive types of recruitment emails on school sign-up to the TP programme provided by EM Tuition: one email included a testimonial from a headteacher on the benefits of tutoring, the other included a summary of the research evidence of the benefits of tutoring. EM Tuition sent recruitment emails during February and March 2021 to 1,949 primary, secondary, and special schools in areas of England where they offer tutoring provision, including Hertfordshire, Essex, North London, the East of England, and Suffolk. Schools were randomly allocated to receive one of the two types of email messages. A team from NFER analysed the impact of the different recruitment emails on the proportion of schools signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) or providing an Expression of Interest (EoI) for their pupils to receive tutoring from EM Tuition as part of the TP programme.The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has been leading the management of the Tuition Partners (TP) pillar of the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) in 2020/2021, funded as part of the government coronavirus catch-up package....