The 16 to 19 tuition fund - 2021 to 2022 academic year

Activate Learning has received funding to provide catch-up tuition to small groups of students affected by the disruption to their education caused by the Covid pandemic.

Students have been disrupted in their learning since March 2020 as a result of the pandemic. In order to help address this, the government has provided Activate Learning with catch up funding that will be used to provide tutorials to small groups of students to help them gain the skills that they have missed out on and reach their full potential.

Some students will have been more adversely affected than others.

Group Sizes

The small groups will consist of no more than five students unless exceptional circumstances dictate that they need to rise to seven.

Eligibility and Assessment

All students will be individually assessed for eligibility based on:
A prior attainment level in English and/or maths being no higher than a 5
Or
Identifying students as living in one of the 27% most deprived wards if they have achieved higher than a grade 5 in both English and maths

Our learning professionals will assess all our learners as they begin their studies and determine whether or not they have had learning disrupted by Covid and would benefit from small group tuition over and above their usual timetabled hours. Students will be prioritised based on need and potential impact, and those with special educational needs or disabilities and those without a grade 4 in English or maths will be prioritised for use of the funds. A clear plan will be in place for all students as part of their tutorial programme.

Delivery

Activate Learning will deliver tuition in three distinct but interlocking ways:

1 – Support for English and maths
We will identify those students who can most benefit from additional maths and English support through initial and on-going assessment in timetabled sessions. Maths and English tutors will identify those learners and any specific support requirements and refer them to the small group catch-up team. Learners will also be encouraged to refer themselves to the tutorial team. This team will identify the needs required, create a student specific support plan and provide ongoing tuition, focussed support and feedback.

2 – Subject specialism catch-up
Some students will be identified by their tutors as falling behind, potentially falling behind, or lacking the sufficient foundation skills required to thrive in their chosen subject area. These subject teachers are the specialists in those areas and will either identify other specialists to conduct catch-up sessions or will offer additional sessions themselves over and above the normal curriculum provided to those students. These will be planned and targeted sessions aimed at raising the skills of students that have missed out on developing baseline skills as a result of their time away from education.

3 – Study-skills
Disrupted learning will mean that students are out of the habit of learning. This could manifest itself in a number of ways and we will use our intervention progress coaches to help identify such students in tutorial activity and through regular meetings with their teachers. These students will be given a baseline assessment to enable their coaches to restore effective learning habits and behaviours. Small group tuition will be used to support the development of these educational attributes to improve the students’ ability to learn and to minimise disruption to others.