What impact does tutoring have?

We now have ten years experience of partnering with schools to deliver tutoring, and we are confident that our model works. We remain the only tutoring provider to have participated in a large-scale randomised control trial that has shown proven, positive impact.

In 2019 we were delighted to partner with Impetus, a charity who find, fund and support those interventions that have the most potential to transform the lives of disadvantaged young people. Through this partnership, we have focused even more closely on ensuring that our work boosts children and young people's academic outcomes and confidence as learners.

How do we measure impact?

SATs and GCSE Outcomes

Improving attainment is key to increasing the life chances of disadvantaged pupils, and so our key impact metrics focus on the performance of our tutees in SATs and GCSE examinations. The cancellation of SATs in both 2020 and 2021, and the use of different systems of grading for GCSEs in each year, has meant that over the past two years we have had limited outcomes data.

In 2021, 72% of Tutor Trust’s tutees in Year 11 achieved Grade 4 or above in their tutoring subject, and 70% made at least one grade of progress over the course of tutoring. We recognise that TAGs were graded differently than in other years, and that 2021 was atypical in so many ways, but are pleased that support from our tutors enabled pupils to achieve grades that unlocked future opportunities.

We welcome the return of external examinations in 2022 that will allow us to present more extensive outcomes data for our tutees.

Other Progress and Assessment Data

We are now delighted to be working with more children and young people in Year 5 and Key Stage 3 than in previous years. While we have previously relied upon schools’ internal assessment systems to measure impact and progress for these learners, we have now also developed a partnership with Learning by Questions (LbQ).

While LbQ is optional for our partner schools, we highly encourage schools to opt in as it provides us with consistent data sets about the progress pupils have made. By administering baseline tests we can examine pupils’ learning gaps and share this data with tutors, and then follow up with end of programme tests to measure progress.

We are hoping to share more data from our use of LbQ later in the 2021/22 academic year.

Teacher Feedback

We greatly value feedback from our partner schools, and conduct regular surveys to gather their views. In 2020/21:

• 94% of our school partners would recommend us to another school
• 86% agreed or strongly agreed that tutoring had a positive impact on pupil attainment
• 90% agreed or strongly agreed that tutoring had a positive impact on pupil confidence
• 86% agreed or strongly agreed that tutoring had a positive impact on pupils’ enjoyment of learning

We meet with schools periodically throughout programmes to review progress, and at the end of programmes meet to discuss overall progress.

Every year, we review feedback from our schools and use it to further improve what we do. In response to feedback, we are about to launch an exciting new project that will give our school partners access to live data about programmes running in their school - more details coming soon!

Read our case studies here

Pupil Feedback

Our pupils are the reason that we exist, and we want to ensure that they feel tutoring makes a real difference to them. We collect Pupil Voice data through surveys, and in 2020/21:

• 80% of pupils agreed or strongly agreed that they have made more academic progress after having received tutoring
• 84% of pupils agreed or strongly agreed that their tutor encouraged them in their sessions
• 78% of pupils agreed or strongly agreed that their tutor made tutoring sessions fun
• 78% of pupils agreed or strongly agreed that, after tutoring, they now feel more confident in lessons