According to a recent study (Burtonshaw & Simon, 2023), more than half (55%) of primary school teachers surveyed said tutoring had “a positive impact on pupils”.
Whether you managed to make use of the National Tutoring Programme funding or not, it is significant that at its time of need the government turned to tutoring. That is because tutoring, done well, works better than most other interventions.
According to the Education Endowment Foundation’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit, effective one-to-one tuition can accelerate a pupil’s progress by providing up to five months’ worth of additional learning across a year. Small-group tuition is nearly as effective, providing up to four months’ worth of additional learning for significantly lower costs (EEF, 2021).
Four months’ progress could transform outcomes for your lowest attaining pupils and could enable your highest attainers to fly. Four months’ progress could go, in some small way, towards levelling the playing field for your Pupil Premium children. It could allow you to find out what the silent middle is really capable of. It could rehabilitate the disengaged and improve attendance with your hardest to reach pupils (see DfE, 2023).
In order to implement tutoring in primary schools and maximise its benefits, I propose a collaborative approach based on successful partnerships between teachers and tutors. This partnership should rely on mutual professional regard, relational trust, and a pupil-centred approach.
Done well, it would allow teachers, with the help of their tutor-partner, to provide that ideal of one-to-one input for every pupil. I call this model teacher-tutor partnerships and it is really very simple.
Introducing teacher-tutor partnerships
Through teacher-tutor partnerships, teachers and tutors collaborate closely to design, deliver and evaluate the intervention. Together, they choose the pupils, deliver and interpret assessments, and plan and adapt instructional approaches.
By communicating regularly and picking up where the other leaves off, the teacher and tutor can jointly deliver an optimal learning experience.
There is much research informing this approach. According to the study cited above (Burtonshaw & Simon, 2023), tutoring works best when:
- It targets the pupils who will benefit the most.
- It is accessible to pupils anywhere.
- There is a commitment to ensuring that provision is consistently high-quality.
- The model is flexible to meet the needs of the school and the pupil.
- Communication between school and pupils and tutors is effective.
- The burden on schools is reduced wherever possible.
- It is committed to measuring impact, evaluating implementation, and consistently improving based on this evidence.
- It is able to continue to scale in order to support schools and pupils who would benefit.
The teacher-tutor partnerships model enables a strategic selection and targeting of pupils, based on both what the teacher knows, and how the tutor feels they can help.
It allows for the delivery of tutoring to be based around pupil need. It can accommodate any age, subject or special need, providing you seek out tutors with the correct expertise. It creates a shared responsibility for high-quality provision and is built flexibly around the needs of all stakeholders.
The model should localise the administration to the instructional level. Rather than reducing admin, we are imbuing it with greater purpose and pedagogical gains.
The partnerships should take an assessment-first approach to planning, with a built-in feedback loop that measures impact to inform implementation. These assessments can take place in the classroom, or in the tutoring sessions. Either way, the partnership should interpret the results together.
Ultimately, the scalability of this decentralised approach is based on finding and keeping the right tutors, by really getting to know them and integrating them as a valued part of the teaching team.
Implementing teacher-tutor partnerships
For a primary school leader looking to implement this kind of approach, the first step is to gather a collection of trustworthy tutors for each key stage or subject.
Look for tutors who can complement and supplement your existing approach. If you are a maths mastery school, your tutors should use the mastery approach also. Or you might select tutors who take an alternative approach, for example giving more time to EYFS-style play-based learning.
This could be a great resource for those pupils who need something different. Place particular focus on putting the right team of alternative provision tutors in touch with your SEND, attendance, safeguarding and pastoral care staff. Brief the teachers on which tutors you have selected and why or, if they have capacity, invite them to participate in the selection process.
Pair-up the tutors with a partner on the teaching staff. You may choose to focus the tutoring intervention on particular classes or subjects. Pay attention also to which tutors are available and which teachers are most amenable to the project. These two factors will be make or break.
Each tutor-teacher partnership will propose which pupils they would like to put forward for tutoring and what format the intervention would take. The recommendations of which pupils would receive tutoring each term, which learning objectives would be covered, and how impact would be measured will be put forward by the tutor-teacher team.
Particular attention should be paid to the guidance around setting and streaming when it comes to selecting groups for tuition. The final decision will be taken by one specific member of the senior leadership team who would take responsibility for supervising not the tuition, but the tutor-teacher partnership.
Evaluating teacher-tutor partnerships
Although the weight of the work sits between the tutor and the teacher, the senior leader responsible for the teacher-tutor partnerships should support and guide the partnership.
Therefore, for partnerships to work well, training must be provided at every level on the delivery of effective research-informed tutoring. Scaffolds should be developed that enable the teacher, tutor and senior leader to plan and evaluate the tutoring intervention on equal terms.
- Julia Silver is the founder of Qualified Tutor, a professional development community that develops and certifies tutors. The Qualified Tutor directory offers listings for certified tutors all of whom have enhanced DBS checks. Visit www.qualifiedtutor.directory. Julia’s book, Love Tutoring: Be the tutor your student needs (Crown House Publishing, 2024) is out now: www.crownhouse.co.uk/love-tutoring
Further information & resources
- Burtonshaw & Simon: The future of tutoring, Public First, 2023: https://impetus-org.files.svdcdn.com/production/assets/publications/The-Future-of-Tutoring.pdf DfE: How tutoring is helping to improve pupils’ attendance, 2023: https://teaching.blog.gov.uk/2023/12/04/how-tutoring-is-helping-to-improve-pupils-attendance/
- EEF: One to one tuition, Teaching and Learning Toolkit, 2021: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit/one-to-one-tuition EEF: Small group tuition, Teaching and Learning Toolkit, 2021: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit/small-group-tuition