NTP Announcement Response

Action Tutoring are pleased to hear Nadhim Zahawi’s plans, announced today, to reform the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) and re-open procurement for a supplier for 2022-24. We welcome the proposals to simplify the programme, both for schools and Tuition Partners, and are delighted to see quality assurance identified as an essential role of the supplier. We appreciate and commend the Government for their willingness to take on board feedback about the programme and to act.

Today’s announcement is a positive step towards getting the NTP back on track and ensuring it achieves its potential. We urge the Department for Education to ensure that the programme maintains a core focus on reaching disadvantaged pupils, in line with its original aims, and encourages high engagement across the country to reach its ambitious targets.

Action Tutoring has built up a decade of experience providing impactful tutoring to disadvantaged children and young people across the country. We are proud to play our part in delivering the NTP. We look forward to working with the Department for Education and the future supplier to further strengthen the programme.

Nervous about your first tutoring session? These tips will help!

Volunteers are the engine of everything we do. In 2020–21, 2,749 volunteers provided nearly 32,000 hours of tutoring to pupils across England. Without you, our mission of tackling educational inequality would not be achievable!

That’s why we want to make sure all our volunteers feel supported and receive the information and guidance they need in order to deliver high-quality tuition to children who need it. 

We understand that not everyone has the experience or the confidence to interact effectively with young people, but we are here to make the tutor journey as smooth as possible for our volunteers. It is important for us to ensure that our tutors have a clear idea of their volunteer role, responsibilities and commitment.

Read more: Curious about the tutor journey? Here are the steps to becoming a tutor.

Lack of tutoring experience should not hold you back from volunteering. The qualities tutors need are empathy, patience and being understanding. In case you are feeling nervous about your first tutoring experience, the tips below will help better prepare you for your first interaction with your pupils.

The first tutoring session is an opportunity for volunteers to create a safe learning environment for our pupils and make them feel heard and understood.  This way, pupils will feel more comfortable and confident, and will engage more during the sessions. 

As a volunteer tutor, you can have a significant impact on a child’s attitude towards the subject you’re tutoring and their learning outcomes.

Introduce yourself

It’s essential to begin the session by greeting and welcoming pupils with a smile. Introduce yourself, then kindly ask your pupils to do the same. It’ll help make everyone feel more comfortable, and set the tone for the rest of the session.

At this stage, you can also take some time to get to know them better, so why not include some warm up activities to find out more about them and their interests?

Familiarise yourself with the content before the session

Our volunteers don’t need to prepare their own activities and resources for learning. Our team has ensured that our tutors are provided with all the training materials and workbooks they need in order to provide personalised and targeted tuition to our pupils.

If you want to increase your own confidence around the  curriculum, we advise you to familiarise yourself with the content before the first lesson. This way, you’re better prepared to answer questions and structure the session.

Ask open-ended questions

Open-ended questions have the power to challenge pupils and motivate them to think critically. This way, they are not passively obtaining new knowledge, but process it in an effective way and provide a range of responses.

Remember to be attentive, show an authentic interest in what they say and reply with kindness.

Pay attention to non-verbal communication

Keep in mind that body language, posture, gestures and the general attitude play an important role in establishing a good relationship with pupils. This can make you appear more approachable and help you connect with your pupils more.

End on a positive note

At the end, make sure you summarise the session and praise them for their attendance, participation and engagement. Remember that praise is an important part of tutoring and can motivate pupils to do better.

Remind them that they are one step closer to their learning goals, and this will leave pupils feeling inspired and excited for the next session.

Lastly, have patience with yourself and your pupils too,  so everyone can take their time to feel comfortable and build a stronger relationship.

Online tutoring  – how does it work? 

The same tips apply for virtual learning. Online  tutors need to pay slightly more attention to reading body language or facial expressions, as they’re not physically in the classroom.

Online learning can be engaging, interactive and fun. We use the Vedamo virtual classroom, which is a safe digital platform,  to deliver online tuition. It gives us the possibility to host live tutoring sessions, regardless of the location, create captivating learning experiences and easily manage the tutoring sessions and content. 

Once our volunteer tutors have completed their initial tutor training, they will be given access to Looop, which is our online tutor resources library. Here you can access the compulsory training for online tutors, our tutoring resources and optional training courses designed to develop or sharpen your skills as a tutor.

If you are tutoring online, it’s important to ensure that you are in a suitable working environment with limited or no distractions. It would be best to run a browser test before your first session begins, so you can check that your network connection, webcam and microphone are working.

We are always here to support you 

Most importantly, our volunteer tutors will have an assigned Programme Coordinator for each volunteering programme they are a part of. When you become a tutor with us, our amazing Programme Coordinators will always be on hand to make sure everything runs smoothly in our online and in-person programmes, and give you the support you need.  

They do so by keeping in touch with you while you’re tutoring to resolve any issues, provide updates and thank you for your support. 

Are you curious to see who they are? Here’s our incredible Programme team! 

At Action Tutoring we believe that the right tools and a supportive environment have the potential to not only help pupils progress academically, but serve as a learning experience for tutors as well. 

This is an opportunity to challenge yourself and get out of your comfort zone. Being nervous before your first tutoring experience is completely normal; don’t let it hold you back from experiencing the joy of giving back to your community and expanding your skills!

If you have the qualifications and want to tutor in English or maths, we would love to hear from you! We welcome all individuals from different backgrounds to join our volunteer team and make a difference.

A warm welcome to our new Trustees!

We are delighted to welcome our two wonderful new Trustees to our Board, Mark Shadrack and Andy Ratcliffe. 

They intrinsically understand the importance of quality education for all pupils, no matter their socioeconomic background, and bring a range of experience and knowledge that will shape our future strategy and help us reduce the attainment gap. 

Trustees play an important role as they build on our commitment to tackle education inequality and support us to provide further academic support to disadvantaged young people. They help to set our strategy and ensure that our activities and objectives are in accordance with our vision, and ensure we deliver on our mission. 

Trustees also support us to ensure that our charity’s resources are managed responsibly. This includes contributing to ensuring that our assets, reputation and people are adequately protected.

‘’Action Tutoring has many exciting and ambitious goals for the next 3-5 years and I’m really excited that Mark and Andy will be a key part of helping us achieve those ambitions, each bringing so many valuable skills and experiences to our team, as well as very importantly a heartfelt passion for the work that we do.’’

Susannah Hardyman, Action Tutoring CEO

Their contributions make a huge difference to the way we work and the impact we have.

A little bit more about Mark and Andy

Mark has extensive experience in finance, governance, and operations across the commercial and charity sectors. Since 2020 he has worked as Chief Operating Officer for the international charity Hope and Homes for Children, having previously been a trustee of the organisation. 

Prior to this, Mark enjoyed an international career in finance at Unilever which included leadership roles spanning operations, strategy, and change management.

‘’In my full-time work at Hope and Homes for Children, we believe that every child deserves to grow up with the love and support of a family. In turn, I am inspired by Action Tutoring’s vision of a world where no child’s life chances are limited by their socio-economic background.  So I am thrilled to join the organisation as a trustee, and I am looking forward to working with my fellow Board members and the Senior Management team in the next exciting phase of our development. I’m also hoping to try my hand at tutoring!’’

Mark Shadrack

Andy is currently Executive Director of Impact Urban Health. He has spent his career working on how poverty and deprivation affect people’s chances in life in the UK and abroad. He started out as a poverty researcher at Oxford University before moving into government including time as a senior education adviser in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit.

Previously Andy was the CEO at Impetus, a venture philanthropy charity focused on social mobility, which was how he first came across our work.

“High quality tutoring can make a massive difference but children whose families can’t afford to pay for a tutor are missing out. That’s why I’m so proud to join the Board of Action Tutoring to support our incredible team to get the best tutoring to more children from disadvantaged backgrounds across the country” 

Andy Ratcliffe

Want to know who else is on our board? Take a look here.

Response to House of Commons Education Select Committee Report on Post-pandemic Education: Is the Catch-Up Programme Fit for Purpose?

In light of the just-released critical report by the House of Commons Education Select Committee highlighting that the country faces an ‘epidemic of education inequality,’ it is more evident that the future of disadvantaged pupils continues to hang in the balance.

Even though school closures significantly disrupted learning for all pupils, the cross-party report found that disadvantaged pupils could be up to eight months behind their peers, pupils spent far less time learning each day, mental health problems for children rose by 60% in the last academic year and schools faced extensive bureaucracy when trying to access funding to support re-opening and educational recovery.

The report also reiterated the apparent inability of the education catch-up scheme, the National Tutoring Programme (NTP), to achieve meaningful targets amid a low level of accountability and transparency by the implementing organisation, Randstad, in its operations. It highlighted that regional implementation of the NTP has seen significant disparities in uptake across the country creating an uneven playing field with the likelihood of widening the attainment gap for schools in the North, Yorkshire and Humber, where it recorded low targets in implementation.

The findings from this report point to the risk of the NTP missing an opportunity to reverse the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education, specifically for disadvantaged children. At Action Tutoring, we strongly recommend that the NTP keeps the core focus on supporting disadvantaged pupils to recover from the pandemic and minimise the apparent deepening inequality in education.

Action Tutoring CEO, Susannah Hardyman said, “I am deeply concerned that recent changes to the NTP structure such as removing targets for delivery to pupil premium pupils and allowing group sizes of 1:6 instead of a maximum of 1:3 are only serving to water down the NTP. This risks losing the potential the programme has to benefit less advantaged pupils in particular. The EEFs own evidence suggests that the smaller the group size, the better and we know that it is disadvantaged pupils that have been most affected by the pandemic.”

Greater transparency and accountability are essential to the success of the programme. Stakeholders including Tuition Partners, schools and sector leaders must get access to half termly progress reports and a reliable channel for making enquiries or sharing feedback. Increased accountability and operational transparency will go a long way to improve the impact of the tutoring programme and build a higher level of trust in the NTP’s ability to bridge the gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers.

Given that take-up of the programme, this year has not been as high as targeted, we strongly recommend that the Department of Education should consider not reducing the subsidy rates next academic year (currently set to go from 70% to 50%), to help increase the take-up in schools and allow more pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds to be covered by the programme. Through that, we can ensure no one is left behind.

Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi has just announced that up to £65m will be invested into the School-Led Tutoring route of NTP, giving more schools the flexibility and support to deliver high-quality tutoring. While we recognise the important flexibility that the schools led tutoring route gives to schools, we would urge the Department for Education to ensure that the quality benefits that the Tuition Partners pillar brings to the NTP are not lost.

As a Tuition Partner and education charity, Action Tutoring is concerned about other highlights of the report including the looming mental health and wellbeing crisis among children, which has been exacerbated by the pandemic. We support the report’s recommendation for the creative engagement of pupils in extra-curricular activities and community programmes to reduce their over-reliance and time spent on social media, which has wider implications for their mental health.

Notwithstanding the devastating and prolonged impacts of COVID-19 on education inequality, we believe the NTP can be reformed to meet the daunting challenge of narrowing the attainment gap as well as recovering lost learning time for disadvantaged pupils to have a fair chance at achieving their full potential.

More important than ever, this is a pivotal moment to reimagine the best ways our education system can better support the development and well-being of disadvantaged children to create a lasting and transformative impact that will benefit us all. Given this, we hope in particular to see the NTP have a long term, lasting legacy in the UK education system.

International Women’s Day –  How do Action Tutoring volunteers promote gender equality in our programmes?

Celebrating International Women’s Day means raising awareness on gender equality and recognising it as the foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world. ((https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/gender-equality/))

Initiatives to promote gender equality in and through schools are critical in raising a generation of girls and boys who understand equality, respect and fairness in society. Education plays an important role in transforming social structures and promoting economic and cultural progress.

This day is a great opportunity to raise awareness of the significance of female empowerment. We can empower young girls to be strong and confident, and teach boys to recognise, celebrate, and embrace that empowerment.

At Action Tutoring we believe that gender equality is an essential component of quality education. Our tutors have enormous potential to address gender inequality issues and end the preservation of toxic behaviours.

How exactly do our tutors encourage a healthy, equal and sustainable future for our pupils?

Our educational resources are free from gender stereotypes

The curriculum is a powerful tool for social change, since it can shape beliefs and values at an early age. Our workbooks and education resources are used as a tool to transfer knowledge in an effective and efficient manner. 

Our team has worked hard to ensure that the learning material volunteer tutors use nurture the minds of young people we support, without stereotypes and gender biases. 

Our tutors do not refer to stereotypical characteristics 

Children are not born understanding what it means to be a ‘boy’ or a ‘girl’. This means that their family, school and community impose gender stereotypes and social expectations on them from an early age. 

Our optional “Bright Ideas” training sessions provide volunteer tutors with materials that prepare them to better handle conversations regarding gender or social expectations. Stereotyping and prejudice can affect pupils’ view of themselves, including what subjects a pupil thinks they are ‘naturally good at’ or ‘naturally bad at’. For example, historically, there has been a widespread belief that ‘male brains’ and ‘female brains’ are different and that men and women therefore have naturally different skill sets and aptitudes. 

With this in mind, we need to be incredibly careful when we communicate with young people in order to avoid stereotyping, such as ‘women stay at home to take care of their family’ and ‘men don’t cry’. Our volunteer tutors use educational activities in such a way that encourage critical thinking and teamwork. 

In particular, one session available for our volunteers includes Managing conversations about prejudice, stereotypes and inequality. It explores how prejudice, bias and stereotypes can impact pupils, and provides strategies to try if challenging conversations around these topics arise. This way, we want our pupils to develop a growth mindset, where they see skills as things that can be learnt and developed over time using effort and resilience, rather than something innate that cannot be changed. Avoiding stereotyped ways of thinking and communicating is an important part of this.

As children grow into adults, it is critical that they feel supported in order to pursue their passions later in life and never allow gender stereotypes to limit their options.

Our female tutors serve as role models

We understand how critical strong female representation is for young girls. It encourages the confidence to have bigger goals and aspirations in life. With strong female role models to look up to, young girls are better equipped to end the cycle of inequality and use education as a tool that opens new doors for them. 

One of our pupils, Bella, is in Year 11 at King Ecgbert School in Sheffield and is tutored by our fantastic volunteer Sophie. She is receiving tuition in English and mentioned how much more confident she now feels in class. Bella thinks that tutoring is more personalised, and she’s not scared anymore to ask questions and engage with her tutor. What’s more significant is Bella’s wish for her future: ‘’I’d like to be really successful and run my own business one day.’’ 

Young girls like Bella need to be supported and encouraged to pursue their dreams and become confident young women later in life, so that they can help others when the time comes. 

International Women’s Day is also an opportunity to recognise the incredible bravery, resilience and strength of ordinary women and men  who fight daily against toxic patriarchal norms and promote equality and fairness. 

Lastly, it’s a day to show our gratitude to our female volunteers who are amazing at what they do and have helped us make a difference in the lives of so many young people.

Let this day be a reminder that great change comes from the efforts of one person at a time.

National Tutoring Programme target for poorer pupils removed

Schools Week has announced that the target of 65% of Pupil Premium pupils participating in the National Tutoring Programme has been removed for Tuition Partners. This comes as a surprise since the 65% pupil premium requirement was initially a key performance indicator between the DfE and Randstad.

Below you will find our joint response with other Tuition Partners to the removal of the Pupil Premium target.

We are writing to you as a collective of organisations committed to the success of the National Tutoring Programme and with specific expertise in working with disadvantaged young people.

We are disappointed that the target of 65% of Pupil Premium pupils participating in the National Tutoring Programme has been removed for Tuition Partners, following the communication from Randstad today. We consider this a dilution of the core original purpose of the programme, to support disadvantaged pupils to recover from the pandemic. The programme now fails to focus on the disadvantaged pupils who need this support the most, which was its original aim. We believe that in the long run, this will only serve to widen the attainment gap further, surely a consequence no one would wish to see from the NTP.

The tuition partner KPI of 65% of Pupil Premium pupils still allowed schools the discretion to add pupils not eligible for the pupil premium, something we recognise was important and needed. It was a balanced approach to ensuring support was reaching those that needed it most, whilst rightly allowing schools some flexibility to adapt to their contexts.

We are concerned that this target has now been lowered due to Randstad’s apparent failure to deliver on the pupil premium target and to ensure uptake of the programme overall. The solution to that is surely not to then change a valuable and needed target, but to review the design of the programme and address Randstad’s ability to deliver the programme in line with the original aims.

We would urge the DfE to reconsider this change and to ensure that supporting disadvantaged pupils remains a top priority of the National Tutoring Programme.

Yours sincerely,

Susannah Hardyman, Action Tutoring
Nick Bent, Tutor Trust
Adam Alagiah, TalentEd
Paul Singh, Equal Education
Robin Chu, Coach Bright
Nathan Sansom, The Access Project
Aisha Washington, Get Further
Gina Cicerone and Janeen Hayat, Fair Education Alliance