Brand new programme to support KS3 students with writing

A brand-new set of resources designed to provide KS3 students with the fundamentals needed to develop their writing skills, setting them up for success as they move into KS4, has been launched this week.

The resources in ‘Literacy Foundations’ will support pupils who are working below the expected standard in Key Stage 3 (KS3) and have some gaps in their spelling, punctuation, and grammar knowledge from Key Stage 2 (KS2).  

Designed by former teachers with experience in planning and delivering KS3 English, tutors can take a ‘pick and mix’ approach to using the resources, meaning that they can be tailored to suit students’ individual needs. 

The resources have been put together following a request from one of The Tutor Trust’s partner schools, who identified that some of their students needed support due to lost learning caused by the pandemic.

The Tutor Trust then ran this as a pilot within that school in the 2022/2023 academic year and saw extremely positive results. Compared to the average progress made by the trust’s pupil cohort that year, Year 7 pupils taking part in the pilot made 15.5 percentage points of progress vs 6.3 percentage points and Year 8 pupils made 22 percentage points progress vs 14.1 percentage points.  

National Tutoring Programme (NTP) funding can be used to pay for 50% of the cost of tuition, as with all of The Tutor Trust’s programmes.

To reach as many young people as possible and thanks to the generosity of funders, the trust kept the cost of their tuition the same this academic year. This means the programme costs as little as £7.16 per pupil per session.

This new set of resources follows the launch of the trust’s KS4 GCSE Maths Foundations, which aims to help borderline students working at Grade 3 or 4 achieve a Grade 5.

Matt Wallis, director of training and quality assurance at The Tutor Trust, said: “We’re really pleased to launch this unique programme, designed to help fill in the gaps in learning that current KS3 students may have due to disruption in KS2.

“This has been developed in response to a need that one of our partner schools identified and, after a successful pilot with them, we hope that more students will find this beneficial.”