Not Waving but Drowning, road to nowhere, runaway train – cliches, but maybe expressing the National Tutoring Programme’s current status? Indeed has anyone got an overview on this area? Maybe Gavin Williamson and education recovery tsar, Sir Kevan Collins? But they keep stumm.
Martin Drury
Course Coordinator (Placements) for PGCE Primary and Early Years
Another hackneyed phrase there, but c’est la vie. The National Tutoring Programme was set up “to support schools in providing a sustained response to the coronavirus pandemic and to provide a longer-term contribution to closing the attainment gap.” So an ad hoc solution, but also a new day and a new dawn. Well, one can hope.
Besides my BCU role, I work as a Lead Tutor for a large private company, which is one of over fifty NTP institutions. It may have social justice on its mind, but it is primarily a business majorly concerned with profit. I also have joined a charity-based provider with longstanding connections with BCU running two different schemes. From my limited experience, however, it seems more concerned with the Education Endowment Foundation funded model and offers an attractive package with limited flexibility.
As a Company A Lead Tutor, I am supposed to recruit and manage a team; deal with day to day queries; perform regular quality assurance; and to respond to safeguarding concerns. A fair enough job description.
However, when I joined in March, recruitment had been completed and I was handed 75 teachers who roughly divided into three camps: lovely colleagues; incensed seethers without a contact for too long; and the painfully naïve (one asked me after a welcome missive and three weekly newsletters who I was), forgetful of everything they know about the scheme, and indeed about the realities of teaching. An added insight into my experience: the lovely ones may be pleasant, but their experiences are often far from solvable.
Quality Assurance has just started (May) in a scheme up and running since November. I could not access all my team’s files (my site was called “corrupt” by the platform expert). In what I managed to sample, I did not recognise much of the frequently touted “high quality” tutoring – indeed, two of the six lessons I accessed were, in my opinion, Ofsted Level 4; but I did review many set-up meetings between tutors and teachers, some of which presented safeguarding concerns such as recording comments on pupils on a site accessible by those pupils or asking for the pupils’ emails; or unprofessional – using the Teaching and Learning platform for private conversations; rubbishing the company-provided resources used by other tutors.
Safeguarding has been described as “the golden thread that runs through education”; my own view would be a time-consuming paper-chase involving many difficult conversations and frustrations penetrating the school office barricade to reach the school DSL
Having done the Lead Tutor job for three months now, I am disillusioned – the tutoring project should be a good one and I have enjoyed returning to English teaching, even though the company model and training are a counsel of perfection.
However, with only four full-time company operatives (only one of which is a former teacher) - although there are some other non-teachers who join in quite effectively - the programme suffers from mushroom growth, a surfeit of “comms” and too much devolved organisation.
Many say it is not what they signed up for and immediate or negotiated resignations are taking place; and then there are the enforced departures for safeguarding reasons, some serious although thankfully not encountered by me. At the moment there is little desire, despite the country coming out of lockdown, to engage with face to face tutoring although neoliberally at one stage it was considered; and, regarding the poor experiences I saw/heard, I was told by my line-manager “we’ve all seen stuff like that”, but I should not offer help as the QA exercise was just a preliminary fact-find to develop a proper process!!
But then attention at the top of the programme is dedicated to trying to rescue tutoring blocks where tutors have left/been sacked or where the Year 11s’ minds are on CAG assessments only or where there have been repeated no-shows by students accessing at home or where there has been no forward momentum because of IT issues etc, etc.
My verdict is that the programme has snowballed, the problems being beyond the scope of the leaders (sending things up a customer support portal is as time-consuming as safeguarding without any ultimate outcome; urging us to be kind to tutors as colleagues are getting out of the kitchen at a merry rate). Nevertheless the company hopes for a successful rebid in the Autumn – a necessity as there are over 1500 tutors with two year contracts!
I joined the second organisation as it employs PGRs. It also might give me a chance of English Literature tutoring as the bulk of my experience has been addressing English reading at level 3 -5. (The failure of Gove’s prescriptions in this area needs urgent redress and could definitely be a research project.)
However, the More Able initiative, for which I clearly interviewed with a presentation on hauntology, seems full, and the core skills tutoring for which I have been pursued does not fit into my available Wednesday and Friday slots after 16.00. There are gaps to fill but schools prefer Monday to Thursday at 1500; so though keen, I am thus far unable to be accommodated, as I have commitments to other children with company A. Principles!
Of course, these are personal observations – undeniably and inevitably limited. However, as a Lead Tutor I know about others’ experiences albeit in the same big company. What do others know of the NTP project, part shadow education and part COVID catch-up hiding in full daylight? Is it all a case of a charge to plug a gap which in many ways straddles awkwardly and ineffectively too much too soon and too little too late?
