Celebrating another year of success

Our keynote speaker, The Rt Hon David Laws (pictured right), has been a long-term friend and supporter of Tutor Trust, so it was fitting to hear directly from him about the importance of tuition for young people, especially those from lower-income backgrounds. We know these pupils have been hit hardest by the pandemic, but also know that the support of a great tutor can be transformational in accelerating progress and increasing confidence.

He thanked Tutor Trust for their work in supporting thousands of young people in the North of England.

Alongside David, we heard from Antony Hughes (right), Chief Executive Officer of The Harmony Trust, a multi-academy trust operating across Greater Manchester and Derby, who spoke passionately about how his team help develop pupils’ talents, and strengths 'however well hidden' and how tuition plays a part of that. He also spoke of the need to ‘recognise and activate the students’ potential’. He added:

For our Chief Executive Ed Marsh (pictured above), at his first Summer Reception since he joined the team, it was an opportunity to take stock and reflect on a busy 12 months. It has been a year that has seen several reports focusing on the impact of the pandemic on young people’s education and the important role of tuition as an intervention. 

These include the Public Accounts Committee’s report: Education Recovery in Schools in England, published yesterday, which referenced the evidence we had submitted to the inquiry about the challenges faced by some schools in accessing tuition.

Ed began by reminding guests of why Tutor Trust had been founded initially, that the inequalities that existed then are still persisting, and that if Tutor Trust didn’t exist, someone would need to invent it.

And he outlined some plans for future growth:

We are hugely grateful to all our supporters, funders, school partners, tutors and staff team who have enabled us to achieve so much in the last 12 months. Since the last Summer Reception, we have:

• Welcomed our first set of SATs results in three years, in which our tutees made strong progress from much lower than usual starting points, with tutoring helping to close learning gaps resulting from the pandemic,
• Received positive results from a second EEF-commissioned randomised control trial, making us unique in the UK education sector with two RCTs. This trial focused on the effect of the tutor-tutee relationship on pupil attendance,
• Delivered as a Tuition Partner under the National Tutoring Programme for a third successive year,
• Recruited 338 new tutors to work with us, including an increasing number of Qualified Teachers,
• Published a report from ImpactEd showing that The Right Angle project, a collaboration with sister charity TLC: Talk, Listen, Change, to offer tuition alongside counselling, has real impact,
• Developed our partnership with the Prince’s Trust to offer life skills alongside 1:1 tutoring for Cared for Children and pupils attending Alternative Provision,
• Grown our partnership with the University of Liverpool Maths School to deliver the MESME (Mathematics Education for Social Mobility and Excellence) project, to support the Maths stars of the future,
• Supported children in East Salford with a ‘transition’ tutoring programme spanning Year 6 and Year 7, smoothing their move to secondary school,
• Partnered with the University of Manchester on the ‘Poverty and Place’ action research project, enabling us to understand more about how poverty impacts children and young people in our communities,
• Invested in our support for tutors after training by introducing peer mentoring and appointing a trained coach,
• Launched a new pupil assessment process, enabling us to better understand the precise learning gaps of our tutees and create programmes tailored to address these,
• Received overwhelmingly positive feedback from our respective School Partner and Tutor Surveys, and in our Pupil Voice responses, and,
• Launched our First Steps programme, which encourages students from similar backgrounds to our tutees, to train to tutor with us.

As always, the event was attended by our full staff team, many of whom started their career with Tutor Trust as part-time tutors, whilst studying at university.

For our colleague Theo Hall, the year since the last Summer Reception has been one of change and growth.

Last summer, Theo attended the reception as a part-time tutor with us and had just finished his Masters’ and final tutoring assignment for the summer. This year, he is six months into his new full-time role with Tutor Trust as a University Recruitment Coordinator.  And he took a moment to reflect on the change.