TUTOR for Primaries

What is TUTOR?

is an online maths platform designed to be an affordable, but equally effective, alternative to private tuition. covers every level of maths from learning to count, all the way up to calculus.
Once each child has completed the diagnostic in school, chooses the right starting point for them and assigns a ‘Stage’ course. Teachers may make and enrol pupils on further courses and, if so, these will appear on the dashboard next to the Stage course. These bespoke courses can be used to set homework in line with the Scheme of Work, support pupils in lessons, and even assign work where the pupil or teacher is absent.
Actual representation of a pupil's progress over a couple of months of TUTOR use

How can I introduce TUTOR to my pupils?

Whenever you have a device with internet access, you have a teacher available to support you with maths that’s not too easy, not too hard but at just the right level! You complete a ‘diagnostic’ which decides where you should start learning. Then, guides you through the maths universe — by completing each step, you master the maths in each goal and open up more possibilities for growing in your mastery of maths. Hollie Stafford, Maths Lead at Eye CofE Primary School, took inspiration from the Thinking Deeply about Primary Education podcast and introduces by using an analogy of a ‘Maths house’ with her pupils:

“When I introduced TUTOR, I wanted the children to first imagine a maths house, what they would like to have in their maths house. Then, I asked them what we need for our house to be stable - houses have piles in the ground, the foundations. I liken these to, for example, number bonds and times tables as these are fundamental foundations of maths. In order for us to have brilliant rooms in our maths house, like for example, algebra and percentages, we really need to have a good understanding of the things that come before them. Then, I introduce TUTOR and I tell them it is a tool that's going to help them to get these foundations really firmly in place before they can have a really super maths house!”

Hollie Stafford, Maths Lead, Eye CofE Primary School

Why should we use TUTOR?

Beyond being an effective alternative to tuition programmes such as the NTP (as discussed by Mark in his recent webinar) to target students for support and close the ‘disadvantage gap’ that has existed long-before the COVID-19 pandemic, is capable of supporting children and their teachers in a myriad of ways ranging from a totally hands-off approach through to actively integrating into classroom learning.

“We really wanted to reduce the disadvantage gap and my headteacher wanted all children to be able to access it. We realise that, due to COVID, there are significant gaps in a lot of pupils’ knowledge, particularly in terms of place value, addition and subtraction and mental calculation strategies. TUTOR is helping to address these gaps.”

Hollie Stafford, Maths Lead, Eye CofE Primary School

How is TUTOR supporting primary schools’ homework strategies?

Eye CofE Primary School uses as its homework strategy so that students are always working on maths at an appropriate level, alongside the maths they are learning in their lessons. In terms of teacher workload, this is a completely hands-off approach, and teachers need only to monitor the goals pupils are completing each week.

Hollie’s team runs class competitions to further encourage pupils to engage with outside of school, and reward pupils when they do.

“We're doing competitions across the year groups - the year five classes were competing to see who could get the most goals as a class effort, and we held a pizza party for the year sixes who completed a certain amount of goals over the holiday.”

And has had good feedback from parents too.

“It's nice because they all use headphones for it, so it's a quiet space for them to think, and actually some of them said they don't usually get homework help from their parents so it really helps them. I think some parents are often a bit afraid [of maths homework].”

“Parents are very engaged with TUTOR and the children work very quietly on their TUTOR homework. This makes for very happy parents!”

This is echoed at Coten End Primary School, where 75% of pupils are engaging with consistently each week since implementing as their homework strategy.

Rather than taking a completely hands-off approach, Coten End teachers use a Bespoke Course to set homework which they edit to include the ideas they want the pupils to be working on. Their teachers find this a really quick and easy way to set homework.

How else can TUTOR be used to support teaching and learning?

1. TUTOR Time
At Bromham CofE Primary School, pupils use during registration to access their courses. Pupils could be working on a teacher-assigned or -assigned course - you could use this time to secure the prerequisite knowledge that you will be teaching in your maths lesson later that day.



2. In-Class Support
Why not form a carousel where some students work on on assigned work (e.g. the prerequisite knowledge for the lesson) whilst others work with the teacher?


3. Staff Absences
Like most schools, Eye CofE Primary School has at times been in a desperate position with staff absences.
has helped with this:

“In primary education, if you had a year six teacher that was off and you were covering them (because you were so low on the ground) with a TA from year two, that would be a very overwhelming experience for the TA. Using a platform like TUTOR would be an excellent idea because you know it's never going to replace a teacher, but it could fill in for someone in an emergency situation.”



4. Intervention
Informing in-class mini-interventions as well as group interventions, perhaps run by a non-specialist.

For example, using in a small group. In one of our schools, Year 2 pupils watch the tuition videos as a group with a TA and use the manipulatives in the video alongside the teacher in the video. They work through the example-problem pairs together as a group with the teacher and then complete the quizzes on their own.

can be implemented in a variety of ways to suit the individual school. You could use -assigned Stage courses for a no-workload homework strategy that identifies and addresses knowledge gaps or an intervention strategy supervised by non-specialists to target pupils needing the most support. For a more hands-on approach, teacher-assigned Bespoke courses can be used to consolidate learning and pre-teach prerequisite knowledge for upcoming topics alongside your existing scheme of work, or another strategy entirely!

Our Education Advisers, with their prior teaching experience, are dedicated to supporting maths leads in finding a solution that works for their individual school context.

We understand that each school is unique, like its pupils!

If you are interested in exploring how could be implemented in your school context, please get in touch using the button below!

Book an Implementation Meeting here