All state-maintained schools can access tutoring subsidised by 75% through the National Tutoring Programme, to support pupils who need extra help. 

Schools can search for approved NTP Tuition Partners and enquire directly with providers. Online tutoring can be provided to pupils at home or in school during lockdown, and tutoring can also booked in for delivery when schools are fully reopened. 

This includes specialist provision for supporting students with SEND, including 17 providers who are able to support students in special school settings.

The NTP is running an information webinar for all state-maintained schools on Wednesday 10^th February at 4pm, where you can hear directly from Tuition Partner organisations and learn about the subsidy. Sign up here.

More detailed information is also available on the NTP website here.

School leaders in Bradford are being urged to act now in the fight to close learning gaps in Maths teaching caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pupils in Bradford are to benefit from a major science funding boost as part of the district’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Bradford Opportunity Area has awarded a £50,000 grant to the North & West Yorkshire Science Learning Partnership, with the funding being used to create a Bradford Primary Science Network alongside a practical science activity scheme focusing on those children most in need of extra science subject support.

The programme will see over 2,000 specially created ‘science in a box’ home learning kits sent out to Key Stage 2 pupils.

There will also be a number of networking, mentoring and continuing professional development (CPD) events for teachers designed and delivered by expert science consultants.

A new Institute of Teaching is set to be established in England to provide teachers and school leaders with prestigious training and development throughout their career.

Training will be delivered through at least four regional campuses, launching in September 2022, with the Institute being the first of its kind in the world. The national initiative will deliver evidence-based approaches to teacher training, and also include mentoring and early career support, alongside leadership courses and continued professional development, building on the existing high-quality provision.

It will be funded as part of £22 million for teacher quality, agreed at the Spending Review, which also includes funding for mentor time for early career teachers as part of the Early Career Framework reforms.

The Institute will become England’s flagship teacher training and development provider, showcasing exemplary delivery of the Government’s ambitious reforms through the new ITT Core Content Framework and Early Career Framework, and its changes to National Professional Qualifications (NPQs).
The training is likely to be delivered through a blend of online, face-to-face and school-based means. When the Institute is at full capacity, it is expected to deliver training for:

• Around 1,000 ITT trainees annually

• Around 2,000 Early Career Teachers and 2,000 mentors annually

• 1,000 NPQ participants annually

It will continue to build evidence around the most effective approaches to training and developing teachers and will use this to support other teacher development organisations, including new Teaching School Hubs, to understand and implement best practice.

What is the Institute of Teaching?

January 2021 update following the DfE's market engagement event

Click here to view the blog

The DfE have released the ‘Review your Remote Education Provision’ framework. This framework aims to help MAT leaders, system leaders, school leaders and governors to:

• identify the strengths and areas for improvement in their school or trust’s remote education provision
• find resources (including training), guidance and networks to help them improve their provision

What is the gov.uk definition of remote education?

• Remote education: a broad term encompassing any learning that happens outside of the classroom, with the teacher not present in the same location as the pupils.
• Digital remote education: often known as online learning - remote learning delivered through digital technologies.
• Blended learning: a mix of face-to-face and remote methods. An example would be the ‘flipped classroom’, where main input happens remotely (for example through video), while practice and tutoring happen in class.
• Synchronous education: this is live; asynchronous education is when the material is prepared by the teacher and accessed by the pupil at a later date.

Here are links to specific aspects of the guidance:

1. Some common myths about remote education
2. Remote education is a way of delivering the curriculum
3. Keep it simple
4. When adapting the curriculum, focus on the basics
5. Feedback, retrieval practice and assessment are more important than ever
6. The medium matters (a bit)
7. Live lessons aren’t always best
8. Engagement matters, but is only the start
    

Work Groups in this project will focus on participant teachers working together to ‘unpick’ (i.e. analyse, deconstruct and trace through the curriculum) a challenging topic from GCSE Mathematics.

Participants will develop insight into the associated difficulties and misconceptions to support teaching in the short term, but also consider the implications for longer-term curriculum design.

Who can take part?

Participants should be secondary school teachers of GCSE Maths.

Ideally, two teachers will attend from each participating school.

Teachers who have previously participated in Work Groups in this project are welcome to take part again in 2020/21.

What is involved?

Each Work Group will follow a ‘workshop – school-based task’ cycle, consisting of several workshops followed in each case by a specific school-based task. Workshops will provide opportunities for teachers to identify and analyse a key challenging topic area, to work collaboratively to develop pedagogical approaches to it and to evaluate and discuss after teaching. There will be school-based tasks for participants to engage with between each meeting.

Time allocation for workshops will be the equivalent of three full days, but hubs will be able to arrange provision to suit local needs.

What will you learn?

Participants and their schools will:

• develop a deeper insight into the maths that underpins learning in a challenging topic, through unpicking and analysing the topic
• develop a deeper insight into the key issues and misconceptions behind the topic
• identify misconceptions and plan a series of lessons to support students in the topic area
• use and evaluate appropriate pedagogies to teach the topic area
• work with their departments to unpick and analyse topics to inform collaborative planning and development of schemes of work.

What is the cost?

The Challenging Topics at GCSE project is fully funded by the Maths Hubs Programme so is free to participating schools.