LESS than half of pupils on free school meals will get support from the government’s “pitiful” catch-up tutoring scheme, Labour warned yesterday. 

The party said the Tories’ flagship national tutoring programme is projected to reach just 43 per cent of the more than 1.7 million children on meals support — only 8 per cent of all pupils — next year.  

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson’s so-called “tutoring revolution,” which he promised would enable pupils to catch up after missing an average of 115 days of in-person classes during the Covid-19 pandemic, is failing Britain’s children, Labour charged.