Educating the region’s school children during lockdown
Children and parents had to quickly adapt to home schooling when the COVID-19 pandemic led to school closures in spring 2020 to prevent the spread of infections. On top of the lack of social contact and missing their friends, students suffered the risk of falling behind in their education without regular teaching in the classroom.
Tutor Trust, an award-winning Manchester charity which provides professional tuition, has a strong track record in giving school children from low income families in the region a boost through extra educational support. The charity wanted to ensure disadvantaged students didn’t miss out on extra tutoring during school closures and quickly adapted to provide online sessions during the pandemic. By early May, the charity was working with six schools involved in the online tutoring scheme across Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds, and in June it was announced they would be part of the Education Endowment Foundation national pilot of online tuition.
Students from The University of Manchester make up 70% of those who work as Tutor Trust tutors in Manchester. Sarah Jane Gilbertson, a secondary school-level Tutor Trust English tutor and an English Literature student, said: “It was important for me personally to continue tutoring through the COVID-19 outbreak as there is already a massive attainment gap in education, which will have only grown over the course of lockdown and school closures. Coming from a working-class household myself, I know how difficult it is to succeed in education with minimal resources. Therefore, it is so important for me to help by supporting the type of students that the Tutor Trust works with so that educational success is not limited to those that can afford the extra help.”