We asked the Department how, as the level of subsidy reduced, schools would be able to meet the cost of continuing to participate in the National Tutoring Programme. The Department told us that it had always been clear that the subsidy would taper and, if tutoring was to become a normal and embedded part of the school system as the Department intended, it would have to be funded increasingly through mainstream school budgets. It assured us that it wanted schools to be sufficiently funded to do all the things they needed to do for their pupils, and that overall school funding in the current year was going up by something in the order of £4 billion.49