Why us

Volunteers

We couldn’t do what we do without our incredible volunteers. They make a tangible difference to our pupils academic outcomes by giving just an hour a week, for 10-20 weeks.

Learn new skills and gain valuable experience

Being a hands-on volunteering role, tutoring allows you to improve your communication, organisational, interpersonal and problem-solving skills, and can be a great addition to your CV. For aspiring teachers, it’s also a great opportunity to gain classroom experience.

Receive training and ongoing support

Before you begin tutoring, you will receive full training that includes an introduction to our tutoring resources, as well as all of the necessary safeguarding information. When you join a programme, you will be assigned an Action Tutoring member of staff, your Programme Coordinator, who will be on hand to offer support, feedback and to answer any tutoring related questions.

Meet like-minded people

At Action Tutoring, we believe that collaboration is an important ingredient to success. As a volunteer tutor, you will be able to connect with other volunteers, develop friendships with like-minded people and share tutoring tips and advice, as part of our volunteer community.

Small time commitment

As a volunteer, we ask for a commitment of just one hour a week, for the duration of a programme. By giving up an hour of your time, you will be helping support a young person to fulfil their academic potential, while only volunteering for a small period of time each week.

Give back to your local community and make a meaningful difference

We work with partner schools in eight regions across England, at schools in your local community, which means that the time you spend tutoring with us can directly impact young people where you live.  If you’re tutoring online, you can be confident your support is reaching some of the pupils who need it most. We measure progress so you’ll see the difference you’re making.

Volunteering with Action Tutoring is an easy and rewarding way to make a difference to the lives of young people living in your community. If you would like to learn more about becoming a volunteer tutor, please visit our volunteers page.

School

We do more than just tutor. We form partnerships with our schools, providing a full package of support to ensure pupils are given the best opportunity to succeed.

I would thoroughly recommend Action Tutoring. The experience pupils have is great and my experience of the charity’s coordination is also great.  As an organisation Action Tutoring is well run, the team are easy to communicate with and they employ really nice people and volunteers that the pupils look up to and enjoy seeing on a weekly basis.

Jo Cooper, Deputy Headteacher, Bramcote College, Nottingham

Dedicated staff member to coordinate each programme

For every tutoring programme an Action Tutoring Programme Coordinator will oversee the delivery of each session, reducing the workload for school staff. Programme Coordinators ensure the smooth set-up and running of sessions each week and take care of all administrative requirements, liaising with the school contact to provide updates, managing any requests and coordinating the volunteer tutors and their tutoring materials. In a survey to our schools last year, all either agreed or strongly agreed that the Action Tutoring staff leading the delivery of the programme were well organised and scored 4.8 out of 5 when rating their quality of communication.

Measurable impact

We pride ourselves on our evidence-based approach to supporting pupils, using data from baseline assessments and progress checks to monitor the impact our tutoring is having and ensuring it focuses on the areas pupils are struggling with. From their initial assessments in September 2019 to their progress assessments in February 2020, pupils made an average of +12% progress.  We also capture the final exam results of our pupils and compare against the national average for disadvantaged pupils.

Tailored tutoring resources

Our tutors deliver sessions from our 12 carefully structured workbooks, designed by curriculum specialists in reference to the SATs and the different GCSE exam boards.  The structured activities are intended to be effective in a tutoring environment. These workbooks organise the subject material across weekly sessions and provide activities to develop pupils’ understanding of different subject areas.  Our online classroom contains session templates which have been carefully adapted from our printed workbooks, designed to suit the online environment.

Volunteer delivered sessions

Our tutor pool is made up of thousands of dedicated volunteers, from a variety of different backgrounds who bring a wealth of expertise. A mix of employees from different industries, university students and retired working professionals, they all have different knowledge and experience that they can share with pupils, and a common motivation to help young people succeed.

A cost-effective NTP Tuition Partner

As a National Tutoring Programme Tuition Partner, schools can use their NTP grant to part fund the cost of our programmes. Action Tutoring will fundraise 45% of the cost of programmes to reduce the cost to schools. We ask schools to contribute a proportion of the costs too, meaning that schools pay less than £6 per pupil per hour. 

With over 10 years of experience in delivering small group tuition in schools, we are able to manage effective tutoring programmes across the country. If you would like to learn more about partnering with us as a school, please visit our schools page.

Supporter / Fundraise / Donate

Our generous financial supporters ensure we are able to continue delivering cost-effective tutoring to the pupils that need it the most.

We’re a charity, not a private company

As an education charity, rather than a private tutoring company, all of the funds we raise go directly towards the cost of running our programmes, such as printing workbooks, purchasing online equipment and training our tutors. We have refined this model over the last decade, in order to maximise the value for money that our programmes offer.

Measurable impact

Supporting Action Tutoring is a great way to ensure that the funds you donate have a significant impact on the academic attainment of young people, demonstrated by the data we collect on the progress of our pupils. From their initial assessments in September 2019 to their progress assessments in February 2020, pupils made an average of +12% progress.

Updates on how your donation is spent

If you provide a large gift, grant or fund, we’ll provide personalised reporting at a convenient time for you, letting you know what your donation has contributed towards and the difference it has made. If you want to hear more from us, we’ll keep you up to date with our activities through social media, newsletters and blog posts, giving you an insight into the work that your donations continue to support.

Dedicated staff member to manage your donations

Our Partnerships and Fundraising Manager will answer any questions you might have about your donations, or about setting up a fundraising activity. We can also provide more information, advice and suggestions to help get you started.

Giving feels good 

Donating to charities not only supports the organisation and their beneficiaries, but research shows that giving can have a positive impact on the donor’s well-being too. By donating to Action Tutoring you can be safe in the knowledge that your money is helping school pupils recover from the effects the Covid-19 pandemic has had on their education.

Every donation we receive supports us to get closer to our vision of a world where no child’s life chances are limited by their socio-economic background. If you are interested in making a donation, please visit our donate page. Alternatively, if you would like more information on the fundraising opportunities we offer, we have more ideas on our fundraising page.

Corporates

By supporting us as a corporate business you can have a direct, positive impact on the next generation of workers.

Make a meaningful difference to the local community

We work with partner schools in eight regions across England, at schools in local communities where your organisation operates, which means that every hour that your team spends tutoring with us can directly impact young people where you work. We measure progress so you’ll see the difference that your team is making.  If your team tutors online you can be confident that their support is reaching the pupils who need it the most.

Personalised support

Our dedicated Partnerships Team offer ‘lunch and learn’ information sessions for your staff who may be interested in volunteering and will support them through their training. On signing up to a programme, volunteers will then be assigned an Action Tutoring member of staff, a Programme Coordinator, who will be on hand to offer support, feedback and to answer any tutoring related questions for the duration of the programme.

Learning and development 

Delivering tutoring sessions is a great way for your team to develop transferable skills that can help improve their communication, organisational, interpersonal and problem-solving abilities back in the workplace. We provide full training, which includes guidance on using our tutoring resources and necessary safeguarding information, as well as ongoing support during the course of a tutoring programme.

Easy commitment

We provide a structured volunteering programme that can easily fit into a busy work schedule. We require a commitment of just one hour per week, meaning volunteers can make a positive difference to a young person’s life, either in person at a local school or online from their home or the office, without having to take up too much of their busy diaries.  We have a range of different session times available too.

Feedback and reflection

Once you’ve finished tutoring, we’ll provide a report on the impact of the brilliant volunteering your team has done and offer ‘reflection sessions’ for colleagues, offering a chance for team-building and to identify the benefits they’ve gained from their involvement.

Partnering with Action Tutoring as a corporate or other organisation means more pupils from low-income backgrounds can access high quality support that helps them to progress in life, whether academically or within the working world. If you would like to learn more about the corporate partnership opportunities we offer, please visit our corporate page.

Pupil Premium

Action Tutoring seeks to partner with schools where their percentage of pupils eligible for Pupil Premium funding is above the national average, ensuring our tutoring is offered to where it’s needed most.

We aim for around 80% of the pupils we work with to be eligible, and we work closely with schools to also support any other pupils who they know wouldn’t otherwise have access to tutoring.

 A disproportionate amount of young people eligible for Pupil Premium leave school each year without basic qualifications in English and maths. We believe that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds aren’t less capable to perform well in school, but they aren’t given the same tools that will enable them to progress and reach their full potential.

Click here to read more about Pupil Premium and how it works.