Looking ahead to a transformational year

I hope that everyone has had a restful break and a happy new year. As we enter the first term of 2024, I’m excited to look ahead to what promises to be an eventful year. As it’s also approaching the end of my first 12 months as Tutor Trust CEO, I’ve also been reflecting on some of the successes from 2023 that I’m most proud of.  

Our impact in 2023

It’s not an overestimation to say that, since joining Tutor Trust last February, I’ve been blown away by the work that our staff and tutors do every day and their commitment to ensuring positive outcomes for the young people that we work with. I’ve loved being able to see our fantastic work in action and hear from some of our learners about the impact our tutoring has had. 

Last academic year our incredible team delivered 7,627 tutoring programmes, our highest number ever, and supported 6,480 pupils in 156 schools. Our 2023 Impact Report highlights the very real impact of our work on young people’s attainment, confidence and enjoyment of learning. Since September, we’ve already supported over 2,600 young people and delivered over 8,000 hours of tutoring – our most successful start ever to an academic year.  

What makes this even more impressive is the climate within which we’ve been operating in the last 12 months. The financial pressures on schools have been well documented over the last year, and it means that schools are having to prioritise where they’re choosing to spend. The fact that they’ve chosen to use that budget to work with us is a real testament to the quality and impact of our tutoring and the trust that our partner schools have in us. We are also very grateful for the generous support of our funders, who have enabled us to cut our headline price per hour by 20%, absorbing the decrease in the NTP subsidy from 60% to 50% and making our provision as affordable as possible for schools.  

Schools support tuition programmes

We know that there is enthusiasm from schools for tutoring to continue beyond the planned end of the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) this coming summer. According to the latest data released by the Department for Education (DfE) at the end of 2023, in the last academic year engagement with the NTP was high: more than 2 million (2,060,618) tutoring courses were started, 70.8% of schools participated in the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) and 23,799,136 hours of tutoring were delivered. I think it’s fair to say that these figures are higher than anyone expected them to be, given the reduction in NTP subsidy from 75% to 60%. Yet, falling engagement nationally with the NTP in the autumn term points to the very real effect that financial pressures are having on schools’ ability to continue to afford this provision. 

We know from Ofsted’s recent research, and of course our own insight, that both school leaders and pupils feel very positive towards tutoring and want tutoring in schools to continue. And we know the need is greater than ever: the Education Policy Institute’s (EPI) second and final instalment of their 2023 Annual Report, published a few weeks ago, highlighted the continued impact of the pandemic on young people across the whole education spectrum. The attainment gap has increased across all key stages since 2019 and sits at its widest in over a decade. High-quality tutoring is a proven intervention for accelerating progress, and, as we approach the general election, we’ll continue to work with our sister organisations to ensure that all parties prioritise continued funding for tutoring.  

As an organisation, this promises to be a transformational year for us, beginning with the launch our brand new website in a few weeks which will make working with us even easier. We’re also launching Speak Up North, a writing competition on the theme of belonging that’s open to all our pupils, so keep an eye out for details on how your school can take part.  

I’d like to take this opportunity to wish all of our partners and supporters all the very best for the next 12 months. We’re all working together to make such a huge impact on the lives of young people in the North of England and I feel that we can look ahead from a place of real optimism.