Pupils need more help to survive perfect storm after Covid – Sue O’Brien

The Government’s flagship Covid catch-up programme for school pupils in England has again come under scrutiny – critics of the £1.5bn National Tutoring Programme have branded it “disastrous” and complained of missed targets and poor-quality tuition.

With GCSE and A-level exams being taken for the first time in three years this summer, young people will be feeling intense pressure to perform. They need extra support now more than ever. But the subject-specific tutoring being offered through the NTP is just part of what our young people need after the impact of the last two years.

Young people haven’t just suffered educationally through weeks of lost learning and many more months of uncertainty. They have suffered emotionally through missed friendships and the social connection we all need.

Combined, these factors have created a perfect storm for our young people to feel disconnected and left behind, particularly those from more deprived areas who have felt the impact more acutely.

We have long advocated for a more holistic approach to supporting young people. In July 2020, with support from the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, we launched the GROW mentoring programme.

The programme pairs recently graduated mentors with pupils in Year 10 to 13 in schools across the region who have been most affected by the pandemic. It focuses on one-to-one support to help pupils focus on their exams, achieve personal goals and plan for their future. The emphasis on positive habits and future planning has been a key factor in the programme’s success so far.

Across South Yorkshire, GROW has supported more than 1,000 pupils since the start of the pandemic. Thanks to new funding from the South Yorkshire Mayor, Dan Jarvis, and two local councils, we aim to support further 1,400 pupils before the end of the 2021-22 academic year.

Evaluation of the first year of the programme has demonstrated a tangible impact. Feedback from schools highlighted the importance of the adaptability of the programme for meeting the individual needs of pupils, restoring confidence in themselves post-Covid, and increased engagement in 
lessons.

Pupils who may have lost their way are talking with confidence about their future paths and because of talking to their graduate mentors are now considering options that they hadn’t had the opportunity to think about before.

It has also helped almost 100 of our graduates get paid roles as mentors, many of whom have used this experience to successfully apply for a range of related roles.

Programmes like GROW are responding to local needs and importantly are designed with schools and adapted. Schools need to have the autonomy to invest in the types of support they know will have the most impact on their pupils.

Schools report to us that they have the subject expertise in schools to meet curriculum needs – they have subject specialists for this – but what they need is this broader support for pupils to cope with the uncertainties that the last two years have presented and help them to make sense of their future.

Pupils have also let us know what the programme means to them. One pupil called Alison who took part in the programme in spring 2021 said: “The GROW programme helped me a lot to improve my confidence and believe in myself that I could do it and to work as hard as possible. That confidence in myself gave me the motivation to carry on and get the grades I wanted to achieve.”

We have demonstrated through our rapid expansion in South Yorkshire in the last two years that GROW is a scaleable model.

If there was a shift in government thinking to recognise that giving pupils this wider support will help their attainment and progression, the GROW programme could support thousands of pupils across the country.

It would require awareness- raising in schools as well as input from regional universities but with the right funding it is doable.

We’ve yet to learn what the long-term impact of Covid is on many of our young people but we owe it to them as a society to do everything we can to mitigate that. If a programme like this can help, even in the smallest of ways, it’s worth a shot.

Sue O’Brien is a former teacher and director of the GROW programme at Sheffield Hallam University.

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