"CHILDREN ARE BEING FAILED BY NATIONAL TUTORING PROGRAMME"

Pandemic catch-up plan is woefully inadequate, warns education provider

THE UK Covid catch-up plan for education will fail unless more scalable ways of delivering tutoring such as virtual tuition platforms are considered, a leading education provider has warned.

The National Tutoring Programme (NTP) fails to include significant provision for schoolteachers to access virtual tutoring in order to boost human teaching.

The NTP even states on its own website that the current arrangement for human tutoring "is not enough to provide support to every disadvantaged pupil in England."

Relying on bringing in external human tutors (whether face-to-face or remote) is not scalable - and cannot remedy lost learning due to the pandemic.

However, virtual tutoring is an online program that simulates a human tutor by using technology to identify a child's learning needs and deliver an automated personalised learning journey using an adaptive algorithm. It is therefore a scalable and cost effective solution - which can bolster human tutoring and teaching for all pupils, including the disadvantaged.

Dr Junaid Mubeen, Director of Education at Whizz Education, which has tutored 1.5 million students worldwide through the Maths-Whizz virtual tutoring platform, is urging the Government to re-think its strategy.

Former university lecturer Dr Mubeen said: "The NTP acknowledges in its Q & A document online for schools that the current arrangements are not enough to support every pupil. By adopting a narrow approach that relies solely on human tutors, the National Tutoring Programme therefore finds itself in an unsustainable position.

"Tutoring of any kind requires sustained, long-term investment if it is to support all pupils, including the disadvantaged. It is extremely difficult to achieve this with human tutors alone."

According to official figures, the NTP will initially support 250,000 pupils - which would not even be sufficient to provide tuition for the c.1.4million pupils on free school meals. However, experts say a blended approach that would enable teachers to set virtual lessons combined with real-world teaching could easily be rolled out for all pupils at relatively minor cost. 

Dr Mubeen added: "The current arrangements allow schools to book a tutor in blocks of 15 lessons. At best we can expect short-term learning gains, but they are sure to be undermined once those supports are removed. As a tutor myself, I would never think to limit my offering to 15 sessions: it's woefully inadequate to catch-up on lost learning. The limitation, of course, stems from the cost of human tutoring. The current level of funding supports a small fraction of the school population.  At Whizz, our 15 years of research shows that virtual tutoring is a robust long-term option, one that can empower teachers. There is a misconception that virtual tutoring is a substitute for human teaching. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many online platforms have been developed specifically for schoolteachers to use alongside their core instruction. Virtual tutoring offers efficacy and scale at once."

Whizz Education says studies show that students who access its Maths-Whizz program for 60 minutes a week can improve their mathematics age on average by over 18 months in their first year of use.[1]

During 2020 to 2021, £350m of public funds will be spent on the NTP with part of that going towards human tutoring as part of a £1billion Government package. NTP subsidised rates for just 15 hours of 1:1 human tutoring average £180, and the EEF estimate a 12-week programme of human tutoring will cost £700 per pupil, whereas virtual tuition can cost from between £30 to £150 per child per year (for one subject).

The NTP website states: "Tuition Partners have initially been funded to provide subsidised tutoring for up to 250,000 pupils, from November 2020. This will substantially increase the amount of tutoring available to disadvantaged children, but is not enough to provide support to every disadvantaged pupil in England."

The website warns that if demand is high then "caps may be introduced to ensure disadvantaged pupils in as many schools as possible receive support."

According to some news reports, demand for human tutors is already outstripping availability through the NTP by around 500%. Whizz Education says it will now be writing to the Secretary of State for Education and members of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Education Technology to bring the situation to the attention of MPs.

[ENDS]

EDITOR'S NOTES

Dr Junaid Mubeen is a mathematician turned educator. As Director of Education at Whizz Education, Junaid oversees the educational strategy of Whizz's virtual tutoring services, which have reached over 1.5 million students worldwide. Junaid is also founder of the Oxford Maths Club, an online enrichment club for primary and secondary students. Junaid writes and speaks on a range of EdTech issues and recently addressed the EdTech Evidence Group on the topic of evidence-informed approaches to Covid recovery. His first book, Mathematical Intelligence, is due for release Spring 2022 (Profile Books).

The Whizz Education platform is based in the UK and is also currently used by schools as far afield as the Kenya, Mexico, Thailand, Russia, New Zealand, United States of America, and United Arab Emirates.

www.whizzeducation.com

NTP / DoE references:

https://nationaltutoring.org.uk/ntp-tuition-partners/for-schools

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/catch-up-premium-coronavirus-covid-19/catch-up-premium

News article references:

https://www.tes.com/news/coronavirus-exclusive-tutoring-demand-outstrips-forecasts-500

https://www.tes.com/news/coronavirus-catch-up-tutors-only-17-fsm-pupils

[1]Whizz Education's internal metrics consistently demonstrate that students who use Maths-Whizz for 60 minutes per week improve their maths age by, on average, over 18 months in their first year of use.