Laying the foundations: The benefits of year-round tuition for your school
Many schools think of tutoring to support high-pressure times in the school year; exams, mocks and resits come to mind. But did you know that embedding tutoring throughout the academic year can support those learners through tough times and beyond?
We know that online tutoring is a high-impact intervention recognised by the Education Endowment Fund (EEF). In fact, their research shows that:
“Tuition is one of the best-evidenced interventions we have to support disadvantaged pupils’ attainment”
Additionally, our latest Impact Report shows that with MyTutor, pupils are making 2.5x the progress of their peers and achieving average grade increases of 1.15. This shows that online tutoring is a key intervention to support pupils throughout their academic careers.
By starting early, you can reap the rewards of online tutoring throughout the year. This is why many of our partner schools choose to start their tutoring programmes in the Autumn term.
What are the benefits of online tutoring?
To start, it’s important to understand what the benefits of online tutoring are overall. So as a reminder, here are the top benefits you can expect to see for your school and your pupils:
For schools
- Quality guaranteed: Our tutors are trained, DBS checked and vetted, meaning you can trust that they’ll provide quality online tuition for your pupils.
- Feeds into classroom learning: Our tutors are fully trained and able to provide learning that compliments and supports the classroom. Tutors work best when they’re aligned with teachers.
- Targeted interventions: With online tutoring, you can select which pupils will benefit most and provide them with learning that’s suited to their specific challenges and needs.
- Flexibility: Tutors can deliver lessons that suit your school timetable - as long as you have internet, pupils can log in for sessions and get started. Traffic is no longer an excuse!
- Oversight of progress: Schools can track attendance and pupil progress through our platform, giving schools essential oversight of pupil progress.
For pupils
- Learn at their own pace: Many pupils struggle to keep up, particularly in large class sizes or on topics they find tough. A huge benefit to online tutoring is that they can learn at their own pace and there’s no fear of getting it wrong - tutors are only there to help them learn.
- Build confidence: Working with a tutor online boosts confidence in learning as pupils get tailored feedback and can see thor progress week after week. Knowing you have a tutor there to support you can go a long way to building confidence.
- Tailored to them: Our tutors will focus on what pupils need most, from filling learning gaps to practising key skills, the learning is tailored to the needs of the learner.
- Catch-up on missed learning: Post-pandemic, many pupils are still struggling to catch up on what they missed. Online tutoring provides extra learning time throughout the week to get back on track.
- Find extra support from a near-peer: All our tutors are near-peer, meaning they’ve recently been through exams themselves and so are able to relate to students' worries and challenges. They can also provide mentorship and advice as pupils think about what’s next.
"Data from last year showed pupils who were enrolled in MyTutor to support with English made 2.5 grade increases. This has helped steer our direction this year since we saw such monumental impact in English - our Head of Department was delighted." - Bayliss Court School (Year-round MyTutor Core programme)
Why should I run a year-round online tutoring programme?
For many schools, running a year-round programme has many benefits and can embed support more thoroughly. Our Teacher Advisory Board, made up of senior leaders in education with over 150 years of combined experience, recommends embedding tutoring in your school from September to Summer.
The key benefits of year-round tutoring programmes include:
Embed the practice
When you start your tutoring programme in the Autumn term, you give your pupils breathing room to get used to the sessions, understand how it works and build rapport with their tutor, long before the stress of exams kicks in.
Giving pupils space to build their confidence working with a tutor and see the results, helps embed the practice into their learning. This also means you can ramp up sessions in key periods such as mocks or over school holidays, knowing that your pupils are already confident learning with tutors.
Build relationships
We know that research shows having the same teachers can boost grades and confidence in pupils. This is because when we have good relationships between teacher and pupil, learning can be better tailored.
It makes sense then that building a relationship with your tutor will benefit pupils' confidence in the same way. As lessons progress, both sides will gain more understanding of each other and be able to work together more effectively.
Prevention over intervention
A big benefit of year-round tutoring is that teachers can support pupils before learning and attainment gaps grow. By providing support at the start of the academic year, you can prevent pupils from falling further behind their peers before it’s too late.
This also shows pupils and parents that they are supported by their school and that proactive help is being offered. Tutoring can further help pupils to reengage in learning as they see their positive progress week on week.
Support more than just exams
Many of our partner schools use online tutoring to support pupils beyond exam season. For learners with large knowledge gaps, additional needs, those who may not be accessing a full timetable, or pupils identified as needing an extra push to improve their grades, online tutoring year-round can make a big difference.
In fact, learners at Newman Catholic College are using online tutoring to boost confidence and catch up post-pandemic.
Hear from Headteacher Andy Dunne below on the success of their programmes:
How do MyTutor programmes support year-round tuition?
At MyTutor, we know that each school is different, so we’ve designed our packages to provide high-quality, flexible and impactful support to pupils across the board.
You can use one or all of these packages in combination to create a bespoke tutoring offer that works for your school's goals and your pupils.
Our 1:1 and 3:1 programmes are:
MyTutor Core
Our most popular programme, MyTutor Core provides sustained, weekly tuition throughout the academic year. It’s a long-term strategy that embeds online tutoring into your learning programme.
The National Tutoring Programme recommends 12-15 tutoring sessions to get the best results. With our core package, you can schedule 12 sessions throughout the term, giving your pupils the consistency they need.
MyTutor Boost
For schools that need impact in less time, our Boost programme delivers a term’s worth of tutoring in just 6 weeks.
Giving 2 sessions a week over a half-term supercharges learners' understanding and confidence in their subjects. This programme works for schools looking to provide a ‘boost’ around mocks and exams.
MyTutor Superboost
Think Boost but doubled! This extra option is for high-intensity daily lessons that provide great results over 1-2 weeks.
We recommend running Superboost programmes during school holidays or study leave. It’s ideal for more engaged pupils and can be used on top of Core or Boost programmes to keep up their progress in school breaks.
MyTutor Tailored
Our newest programme, MyTutor Tailored, provides hyper-flexibility for pupils with unique needs or who may not be accessing a full timetable.
Generally, a tailored programme will involve multiple sessions per week for a targeted selection of pupils. It’s ideal for LAC or EHCP pupils, school refusers, or those with extensive learning gaps.
All of our programmes can be run in 1:1 or 3:1 groups throughout the school year. And given that our tutors are all online, pupils can access tuition around their timetable by simply logging in either at home or at school.
"The stability of having these lessons consistently was a massive support, particularly as these are looked after students where stability means everything to them." - The McCauley Catholic School
Find out more about how to embed tutoring in your school programme in our latest blog!
What could a year of tutoring look like in my school?
Now that you know the key benefits of running tutoring from September to Summer, how do you map out what a year could look like for you?
Well, below is our tuition road map that shows a suggested outline of how our programmes can be structured throughout the academic year.
Schools can mix and match their programmes term on term and have the flexibility to offer different cohorts of pupils tutoring in different ways. Our programmes can support across subjects and key stages, so a year of tuition can impact as many learners as possible.
There are so many benefits to online tutoring, whether used in short bursts (think our Superboost programme) or for longer-term inventions (think our core programme), you can structure your programmes throughout the year to get the most impact.
To get a personalised report on how MyTutor can support your school, try our new and improved School Tutoring Calculator for free!
