EEF study finds weekly maths tutoring boosts progress by three months
Providing small-group tuition to disadvantaged primary pupils can boost their maths results by three months over the course of a year, according to the results of a large randomised controlled trial published today by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). There was also emerging evidence that pupils with low prior attainment tended to benefit more from the tutoring.
The tutoring was provided by The Tutor Trust, an education charity based in Manchester which offers small group and one-to-one tuition by recruiting and training university students and recent graduates to work as paid tutors.
The findings are consistent with previous evidence from the EEF’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit that show small-group tuition is an effective way of improving attainment. However, it is difficult for disadvantaged pupils to access private tuition and the EEF looked to evaluate efforts to make one-to-one and small group tuition available at low cost. The reliability of the findings were emphasised by the EEF, which said this was a “well-designed randomised controlled trial and few pupils who started the trial were not included the final analysis”.
Another a large-scale effectiveness trial published today by the EEF showed less promising results.
The project entitled ‘IPEELL: using self-regulation to improve writing’, used memorable experiences, such as school trips, as a stimulus for improving pupils’ writing.
The first trial in 26 schools showed very positive results; pupils with low prior attainment who were targeted with the intervention made an additional 9 months’ progress in writing.
However, the evaluation of the new, larger, trial conducted across 167 schools) of a scalable version of the programme delivered to the whole class shows mixed results in writing outcomes. And there was a worrying ‘spillover’ effect, with pupils receiving IPEELL making significantly less progress in reading, maths and spelling than the comparison group of pupils, perhaps because class time was diverted away from these subjects and towards the teaching of writing.