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#AppventCalendar Day Six – @TuteEducation

By December 6, 2020December 9th, 2020No Comments

Welcome to Day Six of the 2020 Appvent Calendar!

As you may have noticed on the Appvent Calendar this year, many of the tools we have selected have really come into their own during COVID-19. Continuity of learning and teaching has been a central part to the concerns of students, parents, teachers, school leaders, researchers and politicians alike. It’s been a tremendously difficult year for all of us. 

There have however been many positives despite the hugely difficult nature and anxiety faced by all of those mentioned. One of these positives has been how many edtech companies have been well placed to support teaching and learning in these direst of circumstances. That is why today, I am pleased to share the brilliant online teaching service Tute, as our entry on the Appvent Calendar.

What is Tute?

Tute is an online learning and teaching platform where a team of qualified teachers deliver live lessons to fill gaps in the education provision of children and young people. Lessons are delivered in their interactive, online classroom ‘The Learning Cloud’, built for teaching and learning and equipped with the necessary functionality and safeguarding features to deliver high-quality lessons.

Using their BETT award-winning platform, teachers and learners can access all of the learning resources and activities they need to engage with their learning online. These include things such as their timetables, progress trackers, learning materials and lessons have playback functionality so that pupils can always go back and watch lessons back to support revision activities on any topics they wish to revisit. 

Having visited the Tute offices and seen their teachers delivering lessons first hand and also attended a series of lessons myself (remotely) in the role of students too, I can attest to both the quality and breadth of the provision.

The lessons I attended were as good as any I’ve ever seen in an actual classroom. What I was particularly impressed with in the lessons were all of the digital activities that learners could engage with too. All the tools you might want as a teacher were there; from student response systems, screen sharing, polling, video sharing, it was all there – in an uncanny way, it had the hallmarks of a real classroom of the future; the only difference being, Tute have that to use every lesson, every day. 

National Tutoring Programme (NTP)

As a National Tutoring Programme (NTP) Tuition Partner, Tute provides subsidised, high-quality tutoring to help disadvantaged pupils who have missed out on their education due to school closures.  Tute’s qualified teachers work closely with the school to plan a meaningful scheme of learning for groups of three students across KS1-KS4 and schools pay only 25% of the cost. 

Reinforced by the engagement, responses and keenness of students that I saw in the lessons I attended, a recent survey of their students (1051 respondents), recorded brilliant feedback from those who have been using the service. 

With compelling feedback from students such as “It’s the same as a classroom but better, really” and “I feel more confident answering questions instead of being in an actual class because nobody can see or hear me” it is clearly a platform that is providing a significantly helpful and high-quality service to provide support when schools who need it can access high-quality provision 

As recently highlighted in Schools Week by Professor Becky Francis, CEO of the Education Endowment Foundation:

“The NTP is our chance to reverse this. It represents a huge opportunity to support disadvantaged students and their schools, and has the potential not just to support the educational response to the pandemic but to make a long-term contribution to the effort to close the disadvantage gap.”

I agree with Francis. It is a great opportunity and whilst as Francis goes onto highlight a number of case studies have demonstrated that tutoring programmes don’t always work, as she states, it’s all about the implementation, and this is an area in which Tute excels. Having been in the Virtual School market and working closely with hundreds of schools the last eight years; they know all too well about the importance of a strong relationship between the school, its teachers and importantly the child. As Hattie and others have shared previously, it’s the collective teacher efficacy that can have the strongest impact on student progress and with a strong relationship between all of these stakeholders, something which Tute advocates for, it’s no wonder parents feedback comments such as:

 “Thanks to everyone at Tute. It’s made such a difference for our son who has really enjoyed the online lessons in the absence of physical school. He was so fed up with static online learning and loved the interactive live nature of your lessons”

To learn more about Tute, their online offer and the NTP, please visit their website at Tute.com where you’ll find all the information you need to help you get started.

 


 

This is a sponsored post. 

 

Mark Anderson

Mark Anderson, @ICTEvangelist. Click here to learn more.

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