Success Stories

Paul, Headteacher at King Ecgbert School

Action Tutoring has been working with King Ecgbert School in Sheffield since autumn 2020. The charity has supported the school’s Year 7, 10 and 11 pupils with their English and maths education. Volunteer tutors from across the city attend the programmes each week to help the pupils with their learning. Here’s what Paul Haigh, headteacher at the school, had to say about working with Action Tutoring.

We started working with Action Tutoring as we wanted to help close the attainment gap. Many of our advantaged children already have access to tutors out of school that their parents pay for. We wanted to level the playing field and ensure as many of our pupils who are facing disadvantage could also benefit from 1:1 and small group tutoring, to help improve their outcomes.

Action Tutoring is a really great organisation, in fact I often recommend it to other schools! It’s a charity that can deliver reliable and expert tutors at scale. Exactly the right kind of people who can help our children and who they respond well to. Asking pupils to stay behind school when their friends are going home isn’t easy but the fact they do so willingly and commit to the session shows how much they value it.

I often look around our sixth form and know there are pupils that would not have got there without Action Tutoring. Some of them are now looking at university as their next step.

Tutor with two pupils

Charlotte Bowyer, Assistant Headteacher, added:

We started with Year 10 and 11 pupils, to help them secure good and strong passes in their English Language and maths GCSEs.  In our third year working with Action Tutoring we added a Year 7 programme which supports our school objectives of closing the gap from the start of secondary school. 

I really value how reflective and responsive Action Tutoring is. For example, the English Language booklet was adapted to match exam questions more closely and I was invited to be part of a conversation on how baselines and progress checks are used by the Action Tutoring team. Everyone in the organisation, from the CEO to the regional programme managers, the local programme coordinators and the volunteer tutors are dedicated to supporting pupils who are facing disadvantage and they go out of their way to make the difference.