Levelling up tutoring report release in partnership with CfEY

Action Tutoring is proud to have partnered with the CfEY (The Centre for Education and Youth) and two other Tutoring Providers, Third Space Learning and Trinity White Rose Maths, on identifying how the National Tutoring Programme (NTP), one of the most ambitious English educational policies, should be evolved to ensure its long-term success.

Read more about the NTP here. 

The research draws on the results of a survey of 185 school and trust leaders and teachers (carried out from April to May 2022), as well as 27 interviews with school and trust leaders, senior figures at the Department for Education (DfE), and others with research and policy expertise.  

We are now delighted to share the findings of this research and hope it contributes to effective policy planning in the future.

You can find the full report here. 

Why is this research important?

Evidence clearly shows that tutoring has the potential to support academic catch-up, close the attainment gap and support the government in raising literacy and numeracy standards in order to meet their announced 2030 education targets. 

However, introducing and maintaining large-scale national programmes in primary and secondary schools can be challenging. Even with the best intentions and foresight, financial and political considerations can be a barrier to effective impact. Our goal is for a successful long term in-school tutoring strategy, therefore it is important that we consider the obstacles and carefully plan future policies accordingly. 

As the NTP draws to the end of its second year, this report comes at a timely juncture for building on what’s already been achieved. Five key design principles underpin the approach of the report: 

1. Scaffolded autonomy: Schools want (and need) autonomy to procure and deploy tutors as they see fit. But to do this effectively they need a constellation of support services around them, which can be gradually removed over time. 

2. Simple and accountable: Many barriers to the uptake and impact of the NTP relate to overly complex funding and accountability models. Simplification of these elements would attract schools to in-school tutoring. 

3. Stable and adaptive: Frequent changes to the NTP have undermined its delivery and impact. Consistency over time, while responding to evaluations of the programme for continuous improvement, would resolve this issue. 

4. Equitable and targeted: The focus of the tutoring in schools policy needs to be on reaching disadvantaged young people, without creating an unfair workload for teachers or resulting in exploitative labour market practices with tutors. 

5. Evidence building and applying: To support the ongoing continuous improvement of the NTP and tutoring in schools policy, rigorous, wide- ranging evaluation must be woven into the fabric of the programme. 

Building on this, the report then focuses the recommendations around three key timeframes:

1. Improving the impact of the NTP through incremental changes.

2. Embedding tutoring in schools in the long term by growing a targeted supply of tutors and improving the quality of in-school tutoring. 

3. Transforming tutoring in schools with a long term view, by creating a large self-sustaining supply of high-quality tutors.

Key findings 

Firstly, the research piece brought to light the importance of funding the NTP over a longer period so it can have a bigger impact and achieve its goals. In particular, 70% of respondents said that they believe the NTP should continue for at least a year longer than is currently planned. 

Although schools need tutoring to work as an intervention, they require continuous support in order to better integrate tutoring programmes. The report mentions that for many schools the enrolment process had been a “bureaucratic nightmare’’. 

It is also essential to build a larger and consistent group of tutors that will continue to provide high quality tuition to those who need it the most. This is needed the most in parts of the country where private and in-school tutoring are less common, such as the North East, since parents and teachers were less confident in the value of tutoring as an intervention.

It’s interesting to note that only 6% of the survey respondents said that they do not believe the NTP needs to be changed at all. This clearly shows the urgent need for modifications that will allow the NTP to have greater success. 

Future recommendations 

Schools in deprived areas with financial deficits have been unable to fund the school-level contribution needed to cover the costs of tutoring programmes, as funding changes between years one and two have made the programme feel unpredictable and difficult to plan around for those participating. Therefore, the government must fund the NTP for a longer period of time to ensure it achieves its goals.

The DfE should improve school staff members’ understanding of effective tutoring approaches to deploying and working with tutors, through additional content in the Early Careers Framework, National Professional Qualifications, and other professional learning programmes. 

What’s also needed is for the NTP to prioritise remote tutoring, in order to access more tutors. Remote engagement can be particularly significant for cold spot areas, where tutoring is unavailable.

Finally, despite the current issues the NTP is facing, Levelling Up Tutoring shows a positive attitude towards tutoring. The recommendations mentioned in the report must be implemented rapidly so we can take a step towards closing the attainment gap and create a fairer, more inclusive education system in England. 

Concluding in the afterword, Action Tutoring CEO alongside leaders from Third Space Learning and Trinity White Rose Maths, commented:

“While there has been frustration over and criticism of parts of the NTP, we should recognise that a fairer view needs to also commend the speed of action and scale of funding that the DfE put in place in late 2020 when the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on learning and, notably, the attainment gap became clear.

As the programme has evolved, feedback from schools and Tuition Providers has played an increasing role in shaping the development of the programme. This is to be welcomed. The scale, innovation and success that we are all aiming for with the NTP must be shaped by teachers in schools across the country, and the organisations supporting them, who know what real-world success looks like… ​​

We firmly believe that the NTP has the long-term potential to be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to narrow the attainment gap. We are committed to working with schools and the DfE to ensure it can achieve this crucial goal.”

EEF report finds survey boosts pupils’ attendance at tutoring sessions

Last year, the Education Endowment Foundation commissioned a rapid trial that looked at simple ways of improving pupils’ attendance at tutoring sessions offered through the National Tutoring Programme. Action Tutoring was excited to be one of the Tuition Partners contributing to this trial.

The trial tested out three simple strategies, delivered in addition to the usual training and development offered to tutors by the Tuition Partners. Two of the light-touch interventions tested, including one trialled by Action Tutoring volunteers, were not found to boost pupil attendance above usual levels. However, a third strategy—which used a short ‘snap survey’ to show tutors and pupils what they had in common—was found to have a positive impact on attendance.

Action Tutoring places a high value on evidence for shaping our work. We welcome the chance to help improve the knowledge-base about what strategies enable pupils to get the most out of tutoring sessions. The trial report strongly recommends continuing to prioritise tutors’ relationship-building skills. It also notes the high standard of existing guidance and support already available to our volunteers to support this. For Action Tutoring, being involved in the trial highlighted the growing, powerful bank of knowledge and experience within our volunteer community, and the potential this has to help more disadvantaged pupils transform their learning.

To find out more about the successful snap survey intervention and how it worked, visit the EEF’s website.

Below you can find the EEF’s press release publishing the research:

Encouraging tutors to find out what they have in common with pupils can help boost attendance at sessions

Getting tutors and pupils to take short online surveys to identify what they have in common can help boost attendance at sessions, according to a new report published by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) today. 

The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) tested three different strategies to find out if ‘lighttouch’ interventions could boost attendance at tutoring sessions during the delivery of the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) Tuition Partners pillar in the Spring and Summer term of 2021.

Four of the 33 Tuition Partners took part in the ‘Snap Survey’ trial. Pupils and tutors answered quick-fire questions about their personal interests, hobbies, and values. One question asked participants to choose from a list of major sporting events which one they’d most like to attend. Another asked whether laughter, loyalty or listening is most important for a friendship.

Once completed, both tutors and pupils received instant feedback on their similarities. Tutors also received reminders of their similarities with their pupils for the next five weeks, including some suggested conversation prompts. Tutors then used teaching strategies that incorporated their pupils’ interests to help to build a positive relationship.

The evaluation found that pupils randomly selected to receive the Snap Survey had higher attendance rates than pupils in the ‘business as usual’ control group, where Tuition Partners used their usual strategies to encourage attendance.

The intervention was delivered at a time when attendance in English schools was severely affected by partial school closures and pupil and staff absences. Data from the Department for Education shows school attendance was 58% for the Spring term of 2021.

The trials were designed to assess the effectiveness of the three different strategies, and not the overall attendance rate of the NTP. To do this, they developed an outcome measure that divided the number of session hours attended by the number of sessions purchased for that pupil. On this measure, the ‘Snap Survey’ approach increased attendance at sessions from 62% to 66%.

The other two strategies tested were:

• Engagement-Boosting Reminders, where behaviorally informed reminder messages were sent directly to pupils via email.
• Prioritising Tutoring Relationships, where tutors completed a short web-based activity focused on relationship-building strategies that could be used with pupils.

Tutors also received reminders about the personal strategy they developed in the activity. These two strategies performed no better or worse than the strategies used in the ‘business as usual’ control groups. 

Professor Becky Francis, CEO of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), said:

“To make sure that the National Tutoring Programme delivers on its aims, it is essential that we continue to learn about how to effectively engage pupils. These important findings add to our understanding of how we can secure pupils’ ongoing participation in the programme, and in turn, maximise its impact on learning in the wake of the pandemic.”

David Halpern, CEO of the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), said:

“These are an important series of trials with practical and policy implications. First, they demonstrate the importance of a tutor finding common areas of interest with the student they are teaching, and identify a simple, authentic and unobtrusive way of doing this. It’s a technique intuitively used by many effective tutors, but the trial shows how it can be used more widely. Second, these rapid BIT-EEF trials show how ‘marginal gains’ can be layered on top of existing interventions. This enables programmes to be enhanced, rapidly but systematically identifying which variations work more effectively, and which work no better than usual. Policymakers and practitioners often presume that robust trials take years to set up and get results from. These trials show that this presumption is not true, opening the door to more accelerated improvements in outcomes for our children.”

Why should primary and secondary schools partner with Action Tutoring?

We are an education charity that partners with schools to deliver tutoring programmes for pupils in primary and secondary schools. We provide pupils who are eligible for Pupil Premium with the academic support they need to reach their potential.

Specifically, Pupil Premium funding is a government initiative that was implemented in 2011 as a way to help disadvantaged pupils receive further support in their education. 

It was established following the publication of several research papers clearly showing a significant gap between the educational performance of disadvantaged children and their peers.

Read more about Pupil Premium here.

The ultimate goal is to close the attainment gap between disadvantaged young people and their peers. Evidence suggests that tutoring is highly effective in a pupil’s learning progress, but only 18% of disadvantaged young people have been able to receive tuition support during the pandemic, compared to the 43% of pupils from more affluent backgrounds.

Why should more primary and secondary schools partner with Action Tutoring?

High quality, high impact tutoring sessions

We are proud to have built an evidence-based approach that reflects our positive impact and the hard work behind it. In particular, pupils sit a baseline assessment at the start of their programme and a progress check halfway through their time with Action Tutoring. This gives us the opportunity to evaluate their progress and assess our impact so we can ensure that we deliver high quality tuition to pupils who need it most.

Thanks to the hard work, resilience and commitment of our incredible school teachers and the continuous support of our volunteers, we are proud to say that 81% of our pupils achieved grade 4 or above in English and 80% grade 4 or above in maths!

You can read more about the impact of our tutoring programmes here.

We provide our own educational resources to tutors

Our Training and Curriculum team has worked hard to create the learning material volunteer tutors need for their tutoring sessions. Our goal is to nurture the minds of young people we work with and offer them personalised academic support through our workbooks and resources.

In addition to their induction training, tutors who join our volunteering group have 24-hour access to a series of online short courses called Bright Ideas on our e-learning platform. There, they can access training sessions that better prepare for their role as a tutor and grow their skills and expertise.

 

Our tutors serve as role models

Our volunteer tutors are not only educators, but they also serve as role models, motivating pupils to overcome learning barriers and achieve their potential in life.

Action Tutoring is proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities organisation for its volunteers. As our tutors come from a whole range of backgrounds, including university students, working employees and retired professionals, it helps to inspire pupils to consider future pathways.

Do you want to join our volunteering community? We’d love to hear from you! Read more about getting involved here.

 

 

Experience in working with state schools

Since 2012, when Action Tutoring was registered as a charity, we have provided tutoring for over 6,700 primary school pupils and over 12,500 secondary school pupils.

This has given us the opportunity to work with multiple schools across England and recognise the needs of primary and secondary schools. That’s why we understand the demands and pressures that schools are under, especially after the pandemic.

Our Programme Coordinators are dedicated members of our team

Working closely with teachers, our Programme Coordinators are on hand to oversee delivery, manage any issues that may occur during online or in-person, support tutors, as well as monitor the quality of the tutoring.

They are all passionate about educational equality and work hard to ensure pupils gain the most from their tutoring sessions with our volunteers.

‘’I have been so impressed with the work of Action Tutoring. Their tutors are so well trained and were able to forge positive working relationships in the first session. Their online platform, which we have moved to recently, is incredibly easy to use and the move from face-to-face tutoring to online has been seamless. If you are lucky enough to partner with Action Tutoring – don’t ever let them go!’’

Deputy Headteacher, London

We’re committed to ensuring more and more pupils can receive the education they deserve. Here you can find more information about schools partnering with us.