A network policy analysis of England’s National Tutoring Programme: COVID-19 and the embedding of the private sector in state governance

Abstract

This paper examines the UK government’s main intervention in education during and after the COVID crisis—the National Tutoring Programme (NTP)—which operated in England from 2020–24. It involves a truncated genealogy of the NTP which shows how, when learning loss emerged as a key policy problem, the private sector was promoted as the main policy solution. We trace the evolution and decline of the NTP in response to schools’ experiences and needs. We also conduct a network analysis of the final iteration of the NTP and suggest that although it can be seen as a policy failure, it set a significant precedent in the extent to which the private sector became imbricated into the machinations of governance. We use the construct of heterarchical governance to argue that the NTP saw the establishment of a mezzanine level of governance which saw the involvement of the global education industry, with its concomitant neoliberal imaginary of education, embedded at a powerful level of the policy process. This raises questions about how privatisation might be conceptualised and articulated as well as raising concerns about the capacity for global actors to access and shape national education systems, notably during times of crisis.