What do you want to see more of in our newsletters? Header photo credit: The Fair Education Alliance
Welcome to your winter newsletter
Outside classrooms, we know that the uncertainty in our environment is affecting our whole community – our steadfast volunteers and staff, and the many children and young people who have faced so much disruption already. Their teachers send them away for the holidays not knowing how school life will look when they return.
This only makes our work more necessary. Action Tutoring is staying true to its ambition for 2022. In our second autumn term as a National Tutoring Programme Tuition Provider we’ve connected thousands more pupils with tutors to supercharge their learning; we will keep up this momentum. In the spring, we celebrate a milestone as Action Tutoring marks ten years as a charity. And we look forward eagerly to sharing the fresh impact data and charity strategy currently being prepared.
Huge thanks go to Jen Fox for capably leading our charity through a turbulent year while I took maternity leave. In light of her invaluable service and the essential part she continues to play, I am thrilled to share that Jen will now become Deputy CEO of Action Tutoring.
I hope you enjoy your newsletter and wish you a restful winter break.
Susannah, CEO
Does something look different to you?
You might have noticed... Action Tutoring has had a lick of paint! We have a new logo and refreshed brand, and we’re thrilled with it. We feel it reflects the charity we are today, nearly ten years after we were founded.
As part of freshening up our look, we’ve launched a new website packed with impact data, success stories, essential information for our supporters and other ways you can take part in our work. Have you taken a tour yet?
In the end, all these changes are geared towards connecting with more supporters to help us drive change for children and young people.
We think all our supporters and partners are remarkable. We want you to shout about how you’re making an impact by supporting our work. The window of time for a child or young person to access our support is so short; we want to reach as many of them as we can with valuable tuition in 2022.
What simple action could you take today to help guarantee this support for another pupil in January?
If you use Twitter, would you click the image to share the message about our work with your followers? You can edit the text before posting.
Alternatively, could you share this link with contacts via email or a messaging app?
Our pupils’ 2021 GCSE results are in
Each summer, Action Tutoring coordinates with its school partners to gather as many GCSE and SATs results for its pupils as possible.
This data is essential: it helps us track our impact on pupils’ learning and future opportunities, whilst informing improvements to our work.
GCSE results are in for summer 2021 and we’ve been busily preparing our analysis to share with you. We’re pretty excited about how things look so far. So watch this space!
Cooper finished his Year 6 tutoring sessions in summer 2021.
Check out our pupil interview video, where some of our pupils who wrapped up their sessions last summer describe their tutor in three words.
“Tutoring has definitely been helpful for me with maths. It’s not strict or anything and you just get your own little time to do like whatever you want to do and get better.
Maths is important. This has helped me a lot so I’m very grateful. I was not confident with maths at all and now I can do a lot better than I did before.”
– Cooper
A new workbook to unlock more potential in GCSE English
An exciting addition is coming to the English tutor resources library: a new workbook to support the young people on our programmes in the run up to their English language GCSE. It’s being designed by Rachael, an Action Tutoring Programme Coordinator in Sheffield. Rachael told us a little more about what the workbook will look like and the experience she’s bringing to it:
Why is Action Tutoring developing an English language exam workbook?
Approaching the summer term, many Year 11s want to focus more on preparing for their exams and tell us they find exam-centred sessions useful. Following the success of our maths exam workbook, we’re creating a similar resource to bring together exam technique and writing skills for English language.
How will this workbook be different to the workbooks our tutors already use?
The texts are more in line with what pupils will see in exams, including extracts from the actual texts used by exam boards. While our regular workbook focuses on one skill at a time, the questions in the exam workbook will test pupils on multiple skills at once, similar to the exam. It will include more extended writing practice and a technical focus, encouraging pupils to recognise and label devices, sentence types and word types. We’ll also include a glossary of handy vocabulary.
What professional experience will you be drawing when creating this new resource?
Before joining Action Tutoring, I taught English for 21 years: mostly in one of Action Tutoring’s partner schools! While teaching GCSE English, I played an integral part in setting the curriculum for my school. This involved meeting with exam boards and working hard to make sure each pupil had the best possible opportunity to prepare for exams and succeed.
When will the workbook be ready to use and how can tutors get hold of it?
The workbook will be ready to access via your Looop tutor resources library in February 2022. We’re excited for tutors to use it and unlock more of the potential we see in our Year 10s and Year 11s!
CEO Susannah was delighted to be invited to speak at an event hosted by the Fair Education Alliance at the National Gallery earlier this month. It brought together people across the private, public and third sector who care about building a fairer education system.
Image credit: the Fair Education Alliance.
Opportunities to join our staff team
We're advertising vacancies for paid roles across a number of different areas of our operations. Click the links to view the jobs descriptions. Please share with anyone you know that's passionate about education and looking for a change.
London Programme Coordinator
Partnerships Coordinator (Universities)
Programme Director
Media and PR Manager
Update from our diversity and inclusion team
Action Tutoring was recently awarded the Altogether Better Inclusive
Recruitment Grant from recruitment experts TPP to help us make tangible improvements to our recruitment practices with the aim of improving the diversity of our organisation.
We recently launched a new bite-sized Bright Ideas training for tutors, exploring how they can lead conversations with pupils around biases, stereotypes and equality. We want to support tutors in actively creating an inclusive, respectful environment for everyone involved in sessions.
Alongside other efforts in this space, Action Tutoring is working towards becoming a Disability Confident committed employer. Disability Confident is a government scheme helping employers to recruit and retain people with disabilities and those with health conditions.
Thank you. Celebrating a successful Big Give Christmas Challenge
On Tuesday 30th November, the world marked Giving Tuesday, the global day of giving. Action Tutoring is powered by giving: from the priceless gift of time and support our volunteer tutors offer pupils, to the essential funding we receive from supporters and donors.
This year, we are thrilled to have raised £4,102 in our Big Give Christmas Challenge 2021—the UK's largest match funding campaign. Thanks to our generous pledgers and our Big Give Charity Champion—The Monday Charitable Trust—donations raised during challenge week have been doubled. All funds raised will benefit our brilliant pupils. Thanks so much to everyone who contributed towards making this a success.
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Donate for free while you shop online Do your Christmas shopping with Easyfundraising to generate valuable donations to any cause, including Action Tutoring, at no extra cost. |
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How do Action Tutoring partner schools benefit from working with our volunteers? Read our blog to discover more. |
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