The University of Sunderland has won its bid to be a national tutoring partner for the North East, helping train educators on the £350m National Tutoring Programme (NTP).
Starting this week, the NTP will provide one-to-one and small group tuition to 250,000 primary and secondary pupils disadvantaged by the pandemic.
Principal lecturer, Mikeala Morgans, led a team from the University of Sunderland in devising a scheme to help would-be tutors – including trainee teachers, career returners, and recently retired educators – get up to speed with the initiative’s requirements.
“We will be working in collaboration with regional partners to recruit and train 350 excellent tutors to work in schools across the region,” said Morgans.
“Our programme is designed to reach over 2,500 pupils from KS1-KS4 across the North East in English, mathematics, sciences, humanities and modern foreign languages.”
Nationally, the scheme is expected to deploy around 15,000 tutors – including PhD students and volunteers, many without teaching qualifications – and approximately 1,000 academic mentors .
The North East programme is worth £396,000, with three-quarters of the funding supplied directly by NTP and the remainder coming from participating schools.
“Tutoring will take place in small groups and schools can opt for face-to-face or online sessions,” added Morgans.
“This is a unique opportunity to support the catch-up pupils who were out of school for a significant amount of time over the spring and summer.
“Tutors will also receive high quality safeguarding training to support them in this highly specialised role in schools. This is a very exciting initiative which supports the development of graduates taking up tutor roles in schools, as well as working in tandem with teachers to ensure all pupils are able to catch up and reach their potential.”
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