The army of tutors helping to boost A-level results

As college pupils prepare to receive their exam results today, Andy Gregory talks to volunteers from Tutor The Nation, the charity making a 'big difference' to disadvantaged students

- Andy Gregory

Students at universities across the country are volunteering to help disadvantaged school children turbocharge their A-level results, which are set to be revealed today. Tutor The Nation, which was founded during the Covid pandemic in 2020, has so far provided more than 12,000 hours of free one-to-one tutoring to state school pupils working towards their GCSEs and Alevels.

More than 1,000 pupils who come from low-income backgrounds have so far been matched with and tutored by volunteer university students so far. Out of that number, 80 per cent of those being helped were taking A-levels.

According to the charity's data, one in five pupils on the programme last year achieved at least one grade higher than they were predicted at A-level - with the majority either meeting or exceeding their predicted grades. Last year, grades but often not predictions - returned to normal after the pandemic. Teachers described the programme as making "a big difference" to their pupils' confidence in their subjects and said they had noticed "a huge change in attitude towards study within weeks" of them starting to receive tutoring.

Modestas Riabovas, who received maths tutoring in the last academic year from a University of Oxford student, is now studying computer science at the University of Leicester and is volunteering as a tutor himself. "The lessons were spectacular and made learning the subject much more interesting," said Mr Riabovas, who achieved a high B grade after initially being predicted a C.