Action Tutoring celebrates 10 years of transforming education for disadvantaged young people in Parliament

Action Tutoring, an education charity that provides tutoring for young people facing disadvantage, has marked the 10th year of its founding, with an event in Parliament on Wednesday. 

Hosted by the kind courtesy of Alex Norris MP, with UK’s Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza delivering the keynote address, the event convened the charity’s diverse stakeholders including school representatives, volunteer tutors, funders, policymakers, and trustees to commemorate the milestone. 

In a congratulatory tone, Dame Rachel recognized Action Tutoring for demonstrating a strong understanding of the needs of children and providing meaningful and effective solutions to overcome these barriers.

“Action Tutoring has achieved significant progress in closing the attainment gap for pupils by believing that no child’s chances should be limited by their socioeconomic background and working tirelessly to provide real solutions to disadvantaged children,” the Children’s Commissioner said in her video address to the audience. “It is encouraging to see an organisation of committed individuals, who despite the obstacles of the pandemic, have been able to adapt and provide support to children who have experienced learning loss and deterioration of their mental health.”

Recounting the early beginnings of the charity from Peckham, founder and CEO Susannah Hardyman highlighted seminal moments of her journey to establishing Action Tutoring and honoured the volunteers and supporters who were instrumental in advancing the mission of unlocking the potential of young children who wouldn’t otherwise have access to tutoring.

“We want to significantly expand the number of schools we’re working with, outside of our current eight regions, to ensure we’re reaching young people that really need our support and in areas where there is much less availability of tutoring programmes like ours,” Susannah said. “We look forward to working with sector partners, funders, schools, and tutors over the coming years to achieve these aims, and to ensure that no child’s future is limited by their background.”

By the end of this year, Action Tutoring would have supported 26,000 pupils with the support of over 9,000 committed, high-quality volunteer tutors from a diverse range of backgrounds. 

Other engaging activities at the event included short films on the impact of tutoring on pupils and a lively Q&A with a headteacher from an Action Tutoring partner school, and a distinguished volunteer tutor, who both shared their thoughts on the motivation and the impact of the charity on the lives of disadvantaged pupils. 

Amid the 10th year celebratory milestone, Action Tutoring scored yet another achievement as the Civil Society’s Charity Awards shortlisted it to the final three for the education and training category. The nomination recognised the charity for its response to the Covid pandemic and its impact on the education of young people facing disadvantage.  

Susannah also acknowledged the significance of the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) in ensuring tutoring is accessible to more children and called for it to be permanently embedded in the education system to narrow the attainment gap. 

“The NTP is an incredible opportunity to roll out the benefits of tutoring that we have known exist for years on a significantly larger scale. Our long term hope is that it can become embedded as a lasting feature of the education system.”

Alex Norris MP addresses the audience in opening remarks at the 10th-anniversary event

About Action Tutoring

Action Tutoring is an education charity on a mission to unlock the potential of children and young people who are facing disadvantage and tackle the attainment gap by forging partnerships with schools nationwide. 

Since its establishment in 2012, Action Tutoring has supported over 19,000 pupils with the help of over 9,000 volunteer tutors and created 50 bespoke tutoring workbooks to enable pupils to make meaningful academic progress and open doors to future opportunities.

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Henry Derben

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