Schools Plus supported university students to tackle educational inequality through providing academic support for young people.
What is Schools Plus?
If disadvantaged young people receive academic support from students they will benefit from improved confidence, subject understanding and motivation for learning. Ultimately leading to improved academic attainment, closing the attainment gap.
We work with schools, colleges and community centres working with a high proportion of pupils on pupil premium and with English as a second language. We often work with Widening Participation teams at our partner universities to work collaboratively and meet Access and Participant Plan (APP) priorities. Students provide academic support in three ways:
- Small group targeted support for young people such as reading groups and exam support
- Classroom support offering targeted support for those who need it
- Extracurricular support including homework clubs, science clubs and more
The students we work with are passionate about their subject and have the potential to be positive role models for young people and the training and support we offer enables students to develop the necessary communication and teamwork skills.
What’s the impact?
Schools Plus aims to reduce the impact of educational inequality by supporting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to have improved educational attainment. To meet this aim we ensure every young person who takes part in the programme:
- Has improved subject understanding
- Feels more confident in their ability
- Builds resilience
- Feels more motivated to learn
To achieve this our students are trained to create an environment which is safe, supported, respectful, interesting and challenging. An environment which supports key social and emotional skill development.
In 2022-23
62%
partners agreed pupils showed increased confidence in their studies
partners agreed pupils showed improved expectations for the future
students agreed pupils showed increased subject knowledge
I have worked mostly with children aged 6 – 13 and I hope that I have given them a safe environment where they feel comfortable making mistakes, learning and growing. I have really enjoyed seeing their confidence grow each week and seeing their wins! A highlight was when, after a few weeks of not wanting to read out loud to the group, one of the students participated… and was really eager about reading.
Zara Campbell, Southampton Hub volunteer
WHY SHOULD WE DELIVER SCHOOLS PLUS WITH YOUR UNIVERSITY?
What our university partners value about Schools Plus includes:
- Supporting Access and Participation Plan and strategic priorities. Our programme has dual impact: along with supporting educational attainment and access opportunities for young people, our student outcomes can form part of your institution’s approach to educational gains as part of the TEF, and support students’ wellbeing, belonging, and employability skills.
- Community support beyond tutoring. Tutoring is a core part of our offer with Schools Plus, but it also involves the delivery of extracurricular clubs. These clubs add vital capacity to local schools, with a particular focus on primary (although we deliver across secondary and colleges too). These clubs such as art club, music club or debating building the skills, experiences, and social and emotional capabilities of young people locally at no cost to families.
- Building internal staff capacity and expertise. Schools Plus is a volunteering programme that reaches 50-80 students a year at our Hubs. For many Widening Participation or Education teams, delivering a programme at this scale with internal staffing is challenging. Partnership with us enables your institution to kickstart this delivery, build local connections, and use our tried and tested formula. Our external strategy means if you want to internalise the work, we can help – ask us about handover and quality assurance support.
You may also be interested in Libraries Plus, our delivery in local libraries and community centres.
Schools Plus delivery is part of our ‘Build’ and ‘Embed’ framework.
“The value [the Hub] adds is that students support students, which is really key. [The Hub] provides the dialogue with students and university, and students and the young people and communities. Another benefit is being a good partnership and getting to know the community that we serve well, as in our partnership there is a range of projects [which] Student Hubs have been able to do and all the other activities are all there. The partnership enables us to support strategic vision around civic university. It’s a multi-faceted collaboration and partnership which is ever evolving.”
Trish Nicolaides, Head of Lifecycle, University of Southampton