The Department for Education’s newly beefed-up National Tutoring Scheme enables schools to arrange tutoring for their students at discounted rates. It’s purely voluntary, but the DfE will be publishing data on which schools take up the offer and which ones don’t.

Apparently this is not naming and shaming, or yet another accountability measure introduced by the back door. Nay, nay, thrice nay, as Frankie Howerd was wont to say. It’s nothing of the kind, just another way to provide transparency. Well, that’s all right then.

I don’t suppose it will have occurred to the Secretary of State for Education and his minions that some schools might prefer to make their own arrangements, indeed may already have done so. Professor Bob Harrison was on the money when he tweeted:

I wrote about this “voluntary” scheme a few days ago. It’s about as voluntary as making someone an offer they can’t refuse, except that I don’t suppose any headteacher is likely to find a horse’s head in their bed.

Mind you, given how far the DfE has lost, and continues to lose, the plot, one never knows.

Anyway, if you wish to read the article I wrote about it a few days ago, in the context of teacher recruitment and retention, it’s here:

Crisis? What crisis?