Hi,
We have a strong interview opportunity for any publications covering the schools closures. Richard Marett is founder of Whizz Education, which has tutored 1.5million children around the world.
He is available to talk about how the current Covid catch-up plan for education will fail unless teachers are able to access virtual online learning platforms through the National Tutoring Programme.
Richard is a great interview. He speaks well and can answer questions via email. There are some details below about the why the current arrangements for remote learning are not working - and how they could easily be improved.
National Tutoring Programme is Insufficient to Enable Teachers to Use Online Platforms During Shutdown, Says Education Provider
THE Covid catch-up plan for education will fail - unless teachers can use scalable ways of delivering remote tutoring such as virtual tuition platforms, a leading education provider has warned.
The National Tutoring Programme (NTP) - which is all the more vital in the light of January school closures - fails to include significant provision for virtual tutoring.
It relies on bringing in external human tutors (whether face-to-face or remote) and so cannot support large enough numbers to remedy lost learning due to the pandemic.
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: "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. 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."
The NTP says on its website that caps may have to be introduced because the current arrangement for human tutoring "is not enough to provide support to every disadvantaged pupil in England."
However, experts say that 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.
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. Our 15 years of research shows thatvirtual tutoringis 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.
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