By next week 90 Harvard and Radcliffe students will be tutoring Negro children in subjects ranging from remedial reading to physics.

The project is part of a program sponsored by the Northern Student Movement, which is matching 250 tutors from colleges throughout the Boston area with children in South End, Roxbury, and North Dorchester. The Boston program, which was begun last year, is one of eight set up by the NSM in major cities across the country.

The tutors, who are now getting acquainted with their future students, will meet with the tutees for about an hour once or twice a week in settlement houses and housing projects in the area. Although most of the work will be remedial, some especially bright children will work ahead of their class in school.

About 90 tutees, first- through twelfth-graders, have enrolled in the program. Some signed up at the settlement houses. but NSM workers enlisted many by door-to-door recruiting in housing projects.

One of the biggest problems facing the tutors is getting books, as the Northern Student Movement has few. Unlike the Washington school board, the Boston school committee has not volunteered to lend textbooks, and most school children are not allowed to bring their books home from school.