11901 TheTutorTrust ImpactReport2023 301123 1206 - Flipbook - Page 19
The how
Spotlight: Our Local Matters Partnership
Most of our partner schools primarily
serve children and young people who live
in communities with high concentrations
of poverty. Each of these communities
is di昀昀erent, and it’s crucial that we avoid
simplistic narratives about people and
communities that experience poverty.
This year, we’ve been delighted to
partner with the University of Manchester
(UoM) on the ‘Local Matters’ programme.
Run by Dr Carl Emery and Louisa Dawes at
the Institute of Education, the programme
partners with schools and other
organisations to deliver action research
that deepens our understanding of the
links between power, poverty and place.
Our whole team, and some of our tutors,
took part in research workshops with the
team at UoM to unpack our own attitudes
to poverty, with Carl, Louisa and the team
debunking myths and stereotypes. Following
the workshop, we’ve made changes to our
tutor training, ensuring all tutors are given
an opportunity to discuss experiences of
poverty, as well as stereotypes and myths
that exist about poverty, and that they have
an accurate understanding of Free School
Meals and Pupil Premium.
Since the workshops, our sta昀昀 team
embarked on three action research
projects: 昀椀rstly, we’re looking at how
we currently use language in all our
communications to describe our tutees
and the communities we work in. It’s not
always easy to get this right, particularly
when words such as ‘disadvantaged’ are
routinely used by the Department for
Education when monitoring the attainment
gap between pupils who have been eligible
for Free School Meals in the past six years
and their peers who haven’t. The gap is
real, and we don’t want to obscure it, but
we’re committed to using respectful and
inclusive language that doesn’t see young
people and families experiencing poverty
as somehow lacking. We’d love to work
with sector partners on how best we
can talk about the real di昀케culties many
of our bene昀椀ciaries and their families face
without further marginalising them, and
how, wherever possible, we can genuinely
centre their voices.
The partnership with Local Matters has
sparked many interesting, and at times
challenging, conversations within Tutor
Trust. We are much the better for it.
A second group are looking at how
we collect feedback from tutees, using
a social justice framework to gather
evidence as to what tutoring feels like
for the young people we support and
how it 昀椀ts into their wider lives. Following
this work, we’ll look to redesign the way
we collect feedback from our young people.
A third group are examining the impact
of our new fortnightly reading group in
which sta昀昀 from across the charity read
and discuss material related to poverty,
class, place and marginalisation.
The Tutor Trust Impact Report 2022/23
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