We asked the Department how it would know that the catch-up programme was working. It said that evaluation would be a central part of the development of the NTP, and that success would be achieved if the schemes reached large numbers of children who would benefit from tutoring and if those children made significant progress as a result. The Department has commissioned independent evaluations of the NTP ‘tuition partners’ and academic mentors schemes, and an independent research study into how schools are using catch-up premium funds. However, the Department did not tell us more precisely what indicators it would use to judge the effectiveness of individual schemes or the catch-up programme as a whole.53 National Tutoring Programme