Two pupils are smiling as they write in exercise books

Another year of transformational tutoring

Reflecting on the impact we've made in 2023/24

Published:

  • Time to read: 5 minutes

With most schools on a well-deserved summer break, we reflect and look back with pride on everything we’ve achieved this year, in collaboration with our fantastic tutors and school partners.

Since September, we have supported almost 6,000 young people across Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and Merseyside. We have delivered more than 7,000 tutoring programmes and 33,000 hours of tutoring. As always, we are continually monitoring the impact of our work and we’ve been so pleased to see the strong progress made by pupils throughout the year, as well as seeing improvements in attendance and confidence. This is particularly true of our specialist Tutoring Plus service, which has supported double the number of pupils supported in 2023/2024 than the previous year.

Cushioning costs

These highlights have been achieved in the face of unprecedented pressures on schools, as they have had to deal with stretched budgets, staffing issues and absenteeism reaching crisis point. As the year began, the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) cut school funding subsidies from 60% (2022/2023) to 50% (2023/2024). We were able to reduce the headline cost of our tuition by 20% to remove the burden of that additional cost to schools. This was thanks to the generosity of our funders and enabled us to continue to provide young people from lower-income communities with access to high-quality, high-impact tutoring that might otherwise be out of reach.

Campaigning to government

Alongside tutoring, it was a busy year working with our partner organisations campaigning for funding for accessible tutoring for all, not just a privileged few. Unfortunately, there was no commitment from the government on this and the NTP is due to end in August 2024. It will once again be our generous funders who will enable us to offer partner schools tuition at the same rate in the next academic year as they paid in 2023/2024. We hope that the new government will pledge to enable young people to continue to access tuition.

Connecting with our communities 

This year we shared the results of our Local Matters research project with the University of Manchester, which began at the end of 2022. The project explored how to better support the individuals and communities we work with and resulted in:

  • the creation of a language guide to enable us to be more equitable
  • a survey to find out about what our pupils think of tutoring
  • a critical reading group for staff to discuss the issues faced by the communities we serve as well as their own experiences

This work was presented at a conference in March, attended by Tutor Trust staff and tutors, university students and members of the University's Institute of Education

The year has been impactful for all of us. Tutor Anna Newby, a graduate of the University of Huddersfield, has worked with us since earlier this year. She supports secondary and post-16 students with English, and this academic year has delivered 126 hours of high-quality tuition.

She has experienced the impact of small group tuition on students' confidence and motivation. Anna says:

This one student felt so strongly that she was going to fail her GCSE that she didn’t see the point in even sitting it or attempting it. We had a couple of sessions practising exam questions and she’d written a page on Macbeth. She told me it was the most she’d written all year."

Anna Newby, Secondary Tutor

Our school partners have been pleased with the impact that they've seen from working with us this year.

Nick was a fantastic tutor for us this academic year. All the children thoroughly enjoyed his sessions and he was brilliant at just independently knowing what the children needed. In particular, in year six, the children made amazing progress."
Emily Hassall, St Hilda's CofE Primary School, Manchester

Tutor Trust Co-Founder and Executive Director Abigail Shapiro says:

We’re incredibly proud of the year that we’ve had, despite the challenging landscape that we’ve been operating in, continuing to reach young people who otherwise would be unable to access tutoring.  As we look ahead to the next academic year, we’re optimistic that we can continue to work with schools and colleges across the North, transforming lives through tutoring and supporting young people to achieve more positive outcomes.”
Abigail Shapiro, Co-Founder and Executive Director

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