St Regis Academy

St Regis Academy worked on a Maths-focused 1:1 tuition programme with some of the school’s Pupil Premium students. With MyTutor, they helped to increase pupils’ self-belief, confidence and academic progress.

The challenge

St Regis Academy’s Pupil Premium students lack the opportunity to do a lot of private study at home. So, it was their challenge to offer help and support in the form of affordable tuition (free for parents and pupils) to drive up engagement, confidence and grades.

The programme

The school started initially with a pupil premium-only programme of 15 students, focused mostly on Maths, as that was one of their key areas for improvement. 

“We ran the programme from the back-end of the first term and found that it got real traction from January onwards, as students clocked up more hours,” says Will Wilson, Deputy Headteacher at St Regis Academy.

Although the school started with Maths, pupils also requested to use MyTutor for Science. “That was more their call than ours,” says Will. “Over time, we found that the cohort was whittled down to a core group of about 10 pupils who committed to regularly attending and saw the benefits.”

The impact

MyTutor’s impact has been far-reaching at the school, but here are the 3 key areas:

• Increased self-belief

A lot of the pupils at St Regis Academy were anxious about hitting their forecasted grades. The school has found that pupils say that tutoring has increased their self-belief and helped them to feel that they can tackle things they previously thought they couldn’t.

• Strong relationships

“I think the biggest benefit has been the 1:1 attention that pupils receive,” says Will. “One of our pupils, who’s now in the Sixth Form, was able to build a strong, sustained relationship with a tutor that she saw week in, week out. 

“And that was really powerful for her because it developed her self-esteem and confidence. She felt that the tuition process was totally focused on her as an individual, rather than a class.”

• Improved GCSE results

The school has seen a big improvement in their GCSE results – with the number of pupils receiving a Grade 4 or above in Maths and English up by 11%.

“Our pupil voice survey found that 100% of tutored pupils felt their GCSE performance was better as a direct result of their tutoring,” says Will.

“We also asked the students to sum up their experience in a word or phrase, and the responses that came back included: ‘brilliant’, ‘great’, ‘challenging but beneficial’, ‘excellent’, and ‘key to exam success’.”

The experience

Teachers at St Regis Academy have been engaged and invested in the programme from the start. They engaged as many parents as possible by informing them about the cost commitment they’d made as a school and the benefits it could offer their children – “We drew on MyTutor’s impact data to make a strong case for the programme,” says Will.

They are also putting on an assembly to talk about the impact of the programme – both using their own data and MyTutor’s national data. “We’re also going to have some of our ex-students stand up and speak to pupils about their personal experience, to encourage pupil buy-in.”

But the biggest takeaway from the programme experience is how much it has inspired the pupils of the school. Without exception, all the pupils who took part in tutoring continued their commitment and valued it highly.

• Next steps

Given the positive results, the school is now offering MyTutor on more of an ‘open door’ basis to the full spectrum of students – as opposed to just pupil premium.

A top tip or word of advice from the school

“I think collectively the pupils felt that having someone on the other end of the screen, who was focused on developing them and addressing their issues, rather than developing a whole class, was really valuable. That’s the power of it for me.”

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