The Tutor Trust will play a key role in shaping and delivering the ambitious National Tutoring Programme that the Prime Minister and Education Secretary Gavin Williamson MP announced on Friday 19^th June, as part of the Government’s ‘catch-up’ plan for schools hit by CV19 lockdown measures.  The total government programme, with £1bn of fresh investment by HM Treasury, is a significant boost to our mission of ‘transforming lives through tuition’ across the North of England. 

We welcome this commitment by Ministers and as a team we pledge to do all we can to make the NTP an enduring success.   

We are keen to hear from schools and multi-academy trusts who want to work with Tutor Trust on the NTP in Leeds, Merseyside and Greater Manchester.  We can offer tutoring online, in person in school, or a mixture of the two.  Similarly, people interested in applying to be a tutor with us should keep an eye on the recruitment section of our website here.

A broad coalition, including Tutor Trust, had been calling for major government investment in tutoring, as this is one of the best-evidenced ways of boosting the learning of disadvantaged pupils. These are the pupils who have suffered the greatest ‘learning loss’ during lockdown.  The coalition was spearheaded by the Fair Education Alliance as well as leading experts such as Anne Longfield (Children’s Commissioner for England), Robert Halfon MP (Chair of the Education Select Committee) and Prof Lee Elliot Major (University of Exeter and former CEO of The Sutton Trust).  Sister charities of Tutor Trust who also joined the call for action include Teach First, Action Tutoring, The Access Project, Brilliant Club, TalentEd, CoachBright, TeamUp, West London Zone, Equal Education, Future Frontiers, Get Further and Literacy Pirates. 

School leaders have welcomed the extra funding from government, and as the professional experts it will be classroom teachers who make the key decisions about which pupils should receive tutoring, when tutoring should take place and what the content of tutoring assignments should be.  Our tutors are a valuable extra resource to help teachers to ensure each pupil thrives academically.

The NTP is being led by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), who officially named Tutor Trust as one of their ‘Promising Projects’ in 2019, making us the only Promising Project based in the North of England.

Tutor Trust is also the only tutoring charity in England to have gold standard evidence for the quality and impact of its work through successfully undergoing a randomised control trial commissioned by the EEF.  Prof Becky Francis, the new CEO of EEF, has talked about the importance of Tutor Trust’s evidence base in a TES article about the National Tutoring Programme.

EEF will be working closely with The Sutton Trust, NESTA and Impetus on the National Tutoring Programme.  These four respected charities are already running the government’s national pilot of online tutoring, of which Tutor Trust is a delivery partner.  Tutor Trust has been part of the Impetus portfolio of charities since December 2018.

Since lockdown began, Tutor Trust has launched its own pilot of online tutoring, as well as participating in the official national pilot.  We are using the specialist tutoring platform Bramble for both these pilots.  Currently, we are delivering online tutoring to around 150 pupils at 10 schools across Greater Manchester, Leeds and Merseyside.  Some of the pilot schools have already requested that we expand the online tutoring to additional pupils.  

With the support of the Hg Foundation, Tutor Trust will also be trialling a hybrid model of online and in person tutoring from the start of the autumn term.  This will also cover all three of our cities in the North of England and benefit at least 100 pupils.

Co-Founders Nick Bent and Abigail Shapiro commented: 

“The research evidence is clear on two key points: First, that the attainment gap has got dramatically worse because of lockdown; second, that high quality tutoring is the best way for pupils to catch-up and fulfil their potential.  As one of the leading tutoring charities in England, we will play our full part in shaping and delivering the National Tutoring Programme and do all we can to make it a success, in a spirit of collaboration.”

“School leaders and teachers are rightly insistent that tutors are of the highest calibre, to ensure the best possible outcomes for pupils. One key task for the NTP will be to ensure proper standards are in place for recruiting and training tutors, for Safeguarding, and for quality assurance.  Tutor Trust will bring nearly a decade of expertise and proven excellence to these conversations.  We look forward to deepening our partnership with EEF, Impetus and others to maximise the positive impact of the NTP in the coming school year and beyond.”

“We are proud to have played a small part in securing the commitment to a National Tutoring Programme from the Government and thrilled that our strong evidence of impact helped to convince Ministers to make this investment.  This is a real credit to the hard work and the high professional standards of all our staff and tutors over nearly a decade.”

 

On the EEF website, you can read their FAQs about the National Tutoring Programme and sign up for their regular email updates. 

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/covid-19-resources/national-tutoring-programme/