On 8 June we held our 10th anniversary Summer Reception to celebrate a decade of ‘transforming lives through tutoring’.

Thanks to the generosity of our long-term partners the University of Manchester, who sponsored the event, we were able to host 130 guests in the stunning South Gallery at The Whitworth in Manchester. The music of a jazz quartet, led by one of our tutors, Sam Lightwing, added to the ambiance.

It was our first summer event in three years, and it was wonderful to be able to catch up with our supporters, funders, school partners, staff team and amazing tutors, to share our progress over the last 10 years and our ambitious plans for the future. We were delighted too, to be joined by the Lord Mayor of Manchester, Cllr Donna Ludford and her Consort, Cllr Sean McHale.

Pete McIntyre, Tutor Trust’s Chair of Trustees, thanked all our supporters, describing the first 10 years as a story of successes and achievement, inspiration and aspiration. He said:

Together we have encouraged young people to reach their potential and to believe that it is possible to achieve."

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manchester (pictured left), spoke warmly about the impact of Tutor Trust as 'pioneers' in the North of England and the importance of tuition in levelling the educational playing field.

Dame Nancy also presented our Co-Founders, Nick Bent and Abigail Shapiro, with a plaque from PGCE Secondary at the University of Manchester, to recognise our valued partnership with the University and our role in Teacher Education.

We also heard from James Eldon, Principal of Manchester Academy, who shared his, and his pupils', incredibly positive experiences of tuition.

We were also delighted to share our 10th Anniversary video and copies of our Impact Report.

A number of our long-term partners and supporters feature on the video, including The Rt Hon Robert Halfon MP, Chair of the Education Select Committee. He says of us: 

You're a great success. You've transformed the lives of so many young people in the North of England. It has made a huge difference.”

We were lucky too to interview Eleanor Harrison OBE, CEO of Impetus, and James Turner, CEO of Sutton Trust.  Eleanor says:

We support the Tutor Trust because we believe that they do fantastic work on a robust, proven intervention to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds catch up on education.”

James says of us:

“I think it's amazing that you have reached over 20,000 young people already. I think if we can see, in the next 10 years, that going even further and even faster, it will make a real difference to social mobility in this country.”

We are hugely grateful to all our supporters, funders, school partners, tutors and staff team who have enabled us to achieve so much over the last decade.  The number of people we have impacted is phenomenal – more than 26,000 young people have benefited from tuition.

Since our first tuition session in February 2012, we have:

• Trained 3,300 individuals as tutors,
• Partnered with more than 680 schools,
• Delivered 146,000 hours of tuition, and,
• Supported more than 26,000 pupils in the Greater Manchester, Leeds-Bradford and Merseyside city regions, and,
• Paid our tutors more than £3.2million!

Since 2012, our tuition has also been the subject of not one, but TWO, successful Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)-funded randomised control trials. The first of which, in 2017, gave us gold standard evidence of the impact of 12 hours of tuition on learning.  EEF will be publishing the findings of the second RCT later this month.

We have also developed our Values as a team, and these guide us in all that we do.

However, we are not resting on our laurels. Our successes make us even more determined to reach every young person who needs the support of a great tutor to realise their potential.

We are currently developing our second three-year plan to set the direction of Tutor Trust and agree what we want to achieve by the end of the academic year 2024/2025. We are working alongside the charity Impetus, an organisation that transforms the lives of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds by ensuring they get the right support to succeed in school, in work and in life, to shape our ambitious targets.

Tutor Trust’s Co-Founders, Nick Bent, CEO, and Abigail Shapiro, Executive Director, said of the three-year plan:

We will set ambitious targets, but we are nothing if not ambitious for ourselves, our tutors and our tutees.  We have had tremendous support over the last 10 years and are so looking forward to our next decade!”