Catching Up

I was never a fan of this government’s plan to helping kids to catch up. It was always about a rather abstract race, in which all the kids pursue the same course, but then the government scoops up the kids at the back of the queue, and gives them intensive sessions, 1:1 after school, so that they catch up on the bits they missed out, and we all end up equal. It was typical that they were going to pay private tutors to do this - no need to involve the schools and teachers where the kids actually were, and no sense of exactly what it’s like to be a kid who’s missing out at school, not attending regularly…Are these the sort of kids who’ll opt to stay for an extra session, with someone they’ve never met, while their mates are walking away to freedom?

It was no surprise that this scheme was disorganised, late, and failing to contact a large part of its target audience. Also predictable was that it’s financially corrupt. So one firm running this scheme is charging the school £21 an hour, and the the government a further £63 an hour. That way, the firm makes £84 for each hour of tuition. Guess how much the tutor gets paid? Yup, just the £15 an hour. You’ve met chumocracy, the curse of government attempts to combat Covid by contract; well, it’s alive and thriving in education as well.