To support me financially and secure some experience in a primary school, whilst completing my full-time Educational Doctorate (at the University of Greenwich), I decided to become part of the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) after I was contacted by Randstad Ltd. I was contacted because I am a qualified teacher and had been part of the NTP as an online tutor at TLC Live Education previously.
Randstad Ltd are tuition partners, in the running of the NTP programme and recruitment of tutors and academic mentors for the Department of Education (DoE) catch up programme for those that are unfortunately left behind due to COVID 19 and the unforeseen lockdowns that affected educational attainment.
Bridge the gap with the National Tutoring Programme.
“Every pupil deserves to succeed in education. As an approved partner for the National Tutoring Programme (NTP), we want to help your pupils who may have been disadvantaged due to school closures to receive top-quality tutoring.”
After completing the initial recruitment and compliance I was allocated to a local school. However, before I could start at the school I was to receive 2 weeks’ training to support me to undertake my role as an Academic Mentor. The role involves interventions for maths and/or English in a ratio of up to 1:3 pupils, with the Liverpool Hope University .
On completion of the course, I did receive a certificate as CPD to state I had completed the Academic Mentor Training which was helpful and worthwhile.
Once in the role, further training was needed to navigate NTP portal with the requirement to provide pupil data to the NTP portal for the DoE which was extensive. This involved pupil data and the intervention being set up by myself after obtaining the schools’ pupil data, as part of the role as an Academic Mentor. I, therefore, had to upload 55 pupils data and set up 74 programmes of interventions as well as, conduct the interventions and record progress for the school.
This was all possible and I did complete the uploads, conduct the 74 interventions per week with the 55 pupils, but my project proposal was accepted sooner than I expected at the University of Greenwich Research Committee, so I had to bow out sooner than I wished and expected.
The research behind the ratio of pupils to tutors in interventions was determined by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) , as being most beneficial. Further resources accessed on the course were
On reflection, this was a worthwhile experience that has broadened my experience of teaching and learning at a primary level in key stage 2.
I will now be concentrating on my Ed D Thesis around disclosure in the workplace for neurodivergent autistic university graduates. I will post an update on this shortly.