Our Internal Research and Learnings on SEND

How Tutor Trust supports young people with SEND

We believe that every child deserves the support they need to thrive. Our specialist Tutoring Plus programmes provide dedicated 1:1 support for some of our most vulnerable young people. Last year, the number of pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) who Tutoring Plus supported grew by 80%. Given the diverse needs of the young people within the broad group of ‘SEND’, we take a flexible delivery approach that puts the young person first, by providing tuition in-home or online or focusing on Functional Skills qualifications as an alternative to GCSEs.

Ahead of the Government’s announcement on SEND system reform in February 2026, including an extra £4 billion to fund new and existing support as well as a restructured EHCP process, we conducted an internal analysis of how we support pupils with SEND, what we could learn from our data and how we could better represent these pupils in our advocacy efforts.

Internal Research Project

With the support of a PhD Student at the University of Manchester, Tutor Trust undertook a piece of research starting in January 2025, to understand how we could better represent the young people we support in both our strategy and day-to-day activities.

We analysed data from 2019 until the end of 2025, then looked at the last academic year in isolation. This provided a direct comparison of what had already improved and what could be further improved.

How does this data help us better understand the unique needs of our current tutors and pupils?

Tutor Trust gathers data on the categories of pupils with SEND. This includes communication and interaction, cognition and learning, social, emotional and mental health (SEMH), and sensory and/or physical needs. Analysis of the data showed clear patterns emerging.

The data was first able to highlight groups of pupils with SEND who were underperforming in comparison to other groups. In response, our training of tutors has become more specific and provides greater depth in areas where more vulnerable pupils find the most challenges.

Outcomes from the internal research helped our tutor Training and Quality Team to develop a tutor's ‘Toolkit’. This focused on key areas of SEND support where internal analysis identified areas for improvement.

We also looked at the progress pupils made with different tutors, completing an analysis from a performance and impact perspective. The data identified tutors, schools, and pupil groups which may need some extra support. This gave our teams greater focus when considering where their time was needed most. Ultimately, we believe that by understanding our impact on multiple levels, we can help our pupils to make even greater progress and further tailor our support.

What are the top 3 ‘opportunities for impact’ identified for the new toolkit?

1. More specific micro-Continued Professional Development opportunities (CPD) will allow tutors to be in an even better position than they already are to support specific pupil needs
2. Pupils in exam years could make even greater progress. Knowing this allows Tutor Trust to create more dedicated and targeted support to those pupils and the tutors who work with them
3. Tutor Trust relies on schools to provide the data requested. By collecting more in-depth data, greater analysis could occur, improving the impact on all pupils who utilise our support

How will this toolkit empower Tutor Trust to feel more confident in inclusive practice?

The creation of the toolkit from the data analysis had one major goal: ‘Show the issues, create the solution’. Without an in-depth analysis of the data, any solutions created would have been using qualitative data from staff and pupils for what needed to change. By showing the numerical results, it has made it clear exactly what needs to change and the impact this change could have on pupils with SEND.

Tutor Trust will be sharing the insights we have developed from our work with our SEND pupils in the current SEND reform consultation announced alongside the recent Schools White Paper.