Policy update: November 2020

Government launches flagship scheme to tackle COVID learning-loss

The government has now launched its multi-million-pound effort to help disadvantaged pupils catch up on learning they’ve lost during the pandemic through the National Tutoring Programme. Action Tutoring, now an official provider under the programme, was closely involved in campaigning for catch-up provision and is glad that the strong evidence for tuition boosting pupils’ progress has been recognised.

The full list of 33 providers – who underwent a lengthy assessment process – was published earlier in November. It includes charities like the Tutor Trust, The Access Project, CoachBright and Brilliant Club, as well as private tutoring firms. Pupils access tuition when their school approaches any of the official tuition partners, who must deliver at least 15 sessions for each pupil this year to access the funding. The provision will be heavily subsidised for schools, who will contribute 25% of the cost. The Department for Education has issued a notice calling for ideas on how to extend the programme as they look to make a decision on its future.

The pandemic has significantly affected children and young people of all ages, worsening existing inequalities. We know that efforts to repair the damage must continue beyond summer 2021 if the NTP is to have a significant legacy and make a sustained difference. The Fair Education Alliance is calling on the government to extend the NTP and our CEO, Susannah, has co-signed a letter to the prime minister calling for an extension. The 2020 Spending Review will conclude next week and could offer some additional funds for catch-up in 2020–21.

If you are curious to learn more about the NTP, like which subjects are covered or the quality criteria used to assess providers, check out the NTP website.

The campaign against holiday hunger

You may have been following the high-profile campaign to provide free meals outside term time to school children from low-income families. The fact that so many children and families rely on free school meals is heartbreaking and the pandemic has worsened deprivation, with hundreds of thousands more children becoming eligible this year.

The campaign has been driven forward by 23-year-old footballer Marcus Rashford, alongside charities and think tanks focussed on alleviating child poverty. The campaign already saw great success when the government changed its course and provided meals over the summer holidays, having previously said that increased welfare was reaching these families via other routes.

Rashford launched a petition to expand support further, which gathered over a million signatures. However, the government voted against extending free meals over the half-term break, prompting an overwhelming public response and many businesses and councils stepping forward to offer free lunches.

On 8th November, in a victory for campaigners and children in need, the government changed its position and announced a large support package to address hunger – including a £220 million extension of the holiday activities and food programme in 2021 and a £170 million winter grant scheme to help families facing hardship pay for food and bills.

Of course, questions remain over how the additional funding will be deployed effectively to reach those with greatest need, and how holiday hunger will be addressed beyond the pandemic. Holiday hunger and the considerable need for free school meals is not a new issue in 2020. Important charities, like the Trussell Trust and Magic Breakfast, work hard to deliver nutritious meals to disadvantaged children year round, so nothing gets in the way of them learning and flourishing.

What will happen to exams?

Last summer, the cancellation of exams and the alternative grades awarded had a big impact on young people. Already affected by the pandemic, GCSE and A Level pupils were heading into an uncertain future, without having had the chance to obtain the grades they’d worked for – many not equipped to make alternative plans or navigate the appeals system.

Elsewhere in the UK, in light of how much education has been affected, governments have already taken the decision to cancel exams in 2021. GCSE and A Level exams in Wales will be replaced with classroom assessment and National 5 exams in Scotland will be replaced with teacher assessment and coursework. Meanwhile, in England exams are still set to go ahead, although three weeks later than usual. A survey conducted by LSE suggested strong public support for exam reform, to ensure the 2021 cohort are treated fairly. After a consultation earlier this year, exams regulator Ofqual has made a number of small modifications to how certain subjects will be assessed.

The Education Policy Institute has made some practical recommendations to help make exams fair and deliverable, like offering pupils choices between questions if they’ve not covered a topic and spacing out papers as much as possible. The report also offers a contingency, including more standardised mock exams as a fallback. Action Tutoring volunteers will be working with pupils for as long as possible this year, supporting them to get them back on track in their subject and improve in confidence, regardless of how or when their learning is assessed.

Additional reading…

The impact of lockdown on attainment
Research suggests that disruption to schooling during the pandemic has already resulted in a significant decline in attainment among pupils. In particular, younger year groups and those eligible for the Pupil Premium have shown the largest average declines in attainment levels, as well as those attending schools in deprived areas or in the North and Midlands. To combat this loss of learning and ease the transition to secondary school, Action Tutoring is supporting significantly more Year 7 pupils this year.

New legal duty to educate children at home
The Department for Education has made it law that schools have to provide the same education to children at home and in the classroom – though schools still face big obstacles to ensuring every pupil can access remote learning effectively, particularly around technology.

NEU campaign for schools to close
At the start of the month, the National Education Union launched a campaign for schools to close during the four-week lockdown, gathering over 150,000 signatures from teachers and support staff. It also called for a rota system to be in place for secondary pupils at the end of lockdown, to reduce the spread of the virus.

Reversing cuts to school funding
The Institute for Fiscal Studies published its annual report examining education spending and found that, with the extra £7.1 billion allocated to schools in England in 2022–23, this year’s funding increases will just about reverse the cuts experienced since 2009–10. Further Education has suffered the greatest cuts of all education stages.

Comparing policy responses
The Education Policy Institute released a comparison of different education policy responses to the pandemic, highlighting how different governments in the UK have sought to balance education and public health.

PC Spotlight: A day in the life of a Programme Coordinator

With autumn term programmes well under way, Programme Coordinator for London, Rhys Handley, takes us through a usual day at work for the Action Tutoring staff keeping programmes on track.

I seem to have joined the Action Tutoring team at the most exciting time possible. The charity is currently undergoing unprecedented and rapid growth, thanks to funds from the newly-introduced National Tutoring Programme, meaning we can provide vital extracurricular tutoring to more disadvantaged pupils in more schools in more parts of the country than ever before. That’s where someone like me comes in – a Programme Coordinator; or Action Tutoring’s boots on the ground, so to speak.

Having volunteered as one of more than 1,000 tutors for the charity in the days before national lockdown, I was hired as a PC in August ahead of the new term. I had already met a few of my now-colleagues in my capacity as a volunteer, so I entered the role with the vaguest notion of what it requires – but I realise now that I had barely scratched the surface and was actually only witnessing the (very rewarding) end-result of juggling innumerable plates, assembling many moving parts, or however you’d like to put it.

So, what have I discovered in the months since – easily the busiest Action Tutoring has ever experienced – and what does that look like for me, and the ever-growing team of PCs working with our partner schools and volunteers across England, in the day-to-day?

Now that my programmes are all up-and-running (a full-time London-based PC like me can expect to have seven schools on their plate each term), a typical day starts pretty early. I’ll jump out of bed well before 7am, scoff a banana and throw back a coffee before hopping on my bike to a school for my first programme of the day. Morning programmes usually start around the 8-8.30am mark and PCs need to be there early.

Every school is unique and so each programme comes with its own ‘personality’, each packed with lively, attentive pupils supported by committed, resilient teachers and school staff.

For our in-school programmes, many of which are still running this term while following each school’s Covid-19 guidance, this is to make sure all our tutors arrive on time and can be matched up with their pupils promptly before the session starts. For our brand-new online programmes, it’s to make sure all the tech is up-and-running in good time so the pupils are able to interact with their tutors via our newly-minted online tutoring platform. In these sessions, the tutors are coming to the pupils from their homes and workplaces, so there’s a lot of fiddly factors for a PC to balance to make sure things go smoothly – it’s a new system with lots of kinks and quirks to get used to, as surely we’re all finding in this increasingly-online mid-pandemic world of ours.

Once a session is concluded, I’ll be back on my bike to my flat (Action Tutoring staff are working from home for the most part, like so many others) where I’ll settle in at the dining table with a piping hot cafetière of java to crack on with any number of intricate, but essential, administrative tasks. This usually includes answering emails and fielding calls from schools and tutors, helping out with volunteer training seminars on Zoom, plugging in and processing pupil attendance and attainment data to keep up on our rigorous record-keeping, checking tutor documents to clear DBS checks, and if there’s time, taking 15 minutes to catch up with some of my wonderful colleagues on a Google Hangout to check in and make sure everyone is doing ok.

You get to see these children’s ability, confidence, self-esteem and joy for learning grow in real time and, ultimately, that is the real privilege that comes with doing the job of a PC.

Two or three hours of this will fly by and then, after lunch, it’s back on my bike to an afternoon programme. Every school is unique and so each programme comes with its own ‘personality’, each packed with lively, attentive pupils supported by committed, resilient teachers and school staff.

All of those tricky admin tasks, which do tend to build up, are undoubtedly worth it because they all so clearly feed directly into that moment when a tutor is working with a pupil and you see them click on to something they’d been struggling to understand in class. You get to see these children’s ability, confidence, self-esteem and joy for learning grow in real time and, ultimately, that is the real privilege that comes with doing the job of a PC.

Same again tomorrow? Absolutely.

If you are interested in having a PC like Rhys coordinating tutoring sessions at your school, please enquire about partnering with us below.

Partner as a school

West Coast Runners raise over £5000 for Action Tutoring in relay race challenge

Across September 5th-6th 2020, a team of avid runners in Merseyside completed a 31 hour relay race, raising vital funds to support Action Tutoring in its mission to help pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds achieve a meaningful level of academic attainment.

The newly-formed running group, West Coast Runners, participated in The Speed Project DIY, an event adapted from The Speed Project, that usually sees runners in North America run from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, The Speed Project DIY was created, enabling contestants from across the globe to participate in their own country.

West Coast Runners decided to bring this challenge to Liverpool, in direct support of Action Tutoring pupils.

The group, formed by Kelvin, Tom and Michael, raised over £5,000 for Action Tutoring – an incredible amount that was far beyond the team’s original target, and generously exceeded both their own and Action Tutoring’s expectations.

The runners mobilised support from across their networks, conducting interviews on BBC Radio Merseyside and appearing in news articles and snippets across a variety of Merseyside media channels. This inspiring article in Independent Liverpool details the team’s visions and actions for the race.

Michael, a former Geography teacher and an extremely committed Action Tutoring maths tutor, who has supported Action Tutoring pupils across a variety of programmes in Liverpool, said:

“Liverpool’s pupils need organisations like Action Tutoring now more than ever. School closures disproportionately affect pupils from low-income households, whose parents [or guardians] lack the resources to deliver an entire curriculum from their living room. The charity relies on schools for 40% of its income, so they’re in real need of extra support right now.”

“They’re honestly one of the most evidence-based charities I have ever worked with. You would be amazed how few charities check whether what they’re doing actually works. Action Tutoring collects data on every pupil they support to evaluate impact and improve their service. Their resources and staff are fantastic. We’re really proud to be supporting them.”

Action Tutoring would like to thank the West Coast Running Team for their incredible and inspiring support and dedication, and the NSG group in Liverpool for their donations during the event. If you would like to contribute to the West Coast Runners fundraiser, please visit their GoFundMe page, or donate directly to Action Tutoring by clicking the link below:

Donate To Support

If you have a great fundraising idea and would like to support Action Tutoring in raising vital funds for their pupils, please get in touch with Hannah O’Neill, our Partnerships and Fundraising Manager, via hannahoneill@actiontutoring.org.uk.

Remember to save the date of the Big Give Christmas Challenge, the UK’s largest match funding campaign, running from Giving Tuesday on December 1st – December 8th. Any donations made during this week will be ‘matched’, meaning one donation, double the impact!

Action Tutoring announced as an official National Tutoring Programme Tuition Partner

If you cast your mind back to the warmer and lighter days of June, you might well remember that the government announced a large package of support to help children catch up on the lost learning from Covid-19, including announcing the introduction of a National Tutoring Programme (NTP).

Action Tutoring played an active role campaigning for this initiative, culminating in giving evidence to the government’s education select committee in early June on the impact of Covid-19 on pupils and how a programme like ours could be scaled up.

To get a programme of this size and scale off the ground inevitably takes time, but today we are thrilled to share that Action Tutoring has been approved as a National Tutoring Programme Tuition Partner.

We know the NTP received a large volume of applications, only taking forward a small number that met the quality and scale criteria and we are very proud to have made the final provider list.

Closing the attainment gap through tutoring

Long before the NTP was announced by the government, Action Tutoring’s mission was to make the benefits of tutoring available to those that couldn’t otherwise afford it, ultimately to help narrow the attainment gap and give pupils the best possible chance of progressing well to further education, employment or training. That’s always been our mission and the NTP doesn’t change that.

We believe though that what it does change is the public recognition of the importance of this mission, why it’s a good idea not just for the individual, but for society as a whole and the potential to scale it to have a national impact.

Since we registered as a charity in 2012 and particularly since we began working with Impetus in 2014 we have developed and refined an impactful, proven tutoring model that’s delivering results for children from disadvantaged backgrounds at risk of not succeeding in English and maths.

To do that hasn’t been easy. Understandably, pupils don’t always want extra lessons in a subject they are likely finding difficult. Schools have a lot of pressure and demands and making partnerships between schools and external organisation work well requires effort on both sides. Finally, none of our work would have been possible without the huge numbers of high quality volunteers signing up to tutor with us.

“Our children need champions. Champions – who never give up on them, who understand the power of relationships and insist they become the best they can possibly be. That’s just what the volunteers from Action Tutoring are doing.”
– Lynne Gavin, Headteacher, Pakeman Primary School

But over the years, we’ve learnt what works and we’re excited to now be able to deliver that on a much larger scale, including expanding our geographical reach and significantly expanding our online tutoring.

Expanding Action Tutoring’s work across England

Our ambition through the NTP is to double our reach and the NTP is giving us the support to do this, and indeed the scale for other organisations too, to help us grow at a rate we couldn’t on our own in order to make the benefits of tutoring as widely available as possible.

Partner as a school     Become a volunteer

A recent Bloomberg article has highlighted the scale of the NTP as a great education experiment that could be the game changer needed for social mobility. At Action Tutoring, we certainly believe that has the potential to be the case.

There is fantastic evidence that tutoring works; that’s precisely why so many parents will pay for it for their children. But the tutoring industry will only be a driver of widening the gap in social mobility if it is not made available to those that can’t afford it too, especially those that are struggling most in their education.

That’s why Action Tutoring was founded and we’ve built strong evidence we can make tutoring work for disadvantaged pupils to drive results and close the attainment gap.

Action Tutoring commissioned an external evaluator, NIESR, to carry out an evaluation of the work we do with our pupils. The headline results, from this piece of work, suggested that:

• The programme has a positive impact on GCSE point scores equivalent to 1/3 of a grade with just 5-6 sessions.
• For those pupils who attend 7-8 sessions an additional 1/2 a grade progress was found.

For context, typically, in a whole academic year, schools would expect pupils to make one grade of progress outlining the impact tutoring, and in particular, our work has been having on disadvantaged pupils.

Now, through the NTP there is an opportunity for this work to be delivered on a significantly bigger scale.

The National Tutoring Programme must continue beyond next summer

In order for the benefits of the NTP to be embedded and make a game changing difference to social mobility, it will need to run for more than a year and while we’re delighted today to be beginning our journey as an NTP Tuition Partner, we hope it won’t be one that finishes next summer.

The NTP has been kickstarted by the need for covid catch up; with covid highlighting just how big the inequalities in our society are for children and young people. But prior to covid the UK already had one of the largest attainment gaps in the developed world and evidence from the EPI has shown that in recent years the progress to close that gap has slowed. If the NTP is extended, it has the potential not just to support covid catch up, but to actually help close the UKs attainment gap significantly further. Progress on that really would be something huge to celebrate, benefiting wider society as well as individuals.

So as this new ‘education experiment’ gets underway, we look forward to playing our part for the long term, to ensure that all pupils, regardless of their background, are supported to achieve the best they possibly can.

Partner as a school     Become a volunteer

For more information about the National Tutoring Programme, please visit our dedicated page.