Free Tuition for Disadvantaged Pupils

by Yellow Brick Rd Community Interest Company in Harlow, Essex, United Kingdom

Free Tuition for Disadvantaged Pupils

Total raised £0

£10,000 target 63 days left
0% 0 supporters
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 19th April 2025 at 7:14pm

To remove the barriers to getting a good education faced by disadvantaged pupils, by providing a pathway to success via high quality tuition

by Yellow Brick Rd Community Interest Company in Harlow, Essex, United Kingdom

Yellow Brick Rd

Our Mission

Our mission at Yellow Brick Rd is simple. It is to remove the barriers to accessing a good education faced by disadvantaged pupils, by providing a pathway to success via high quality tuition. 

Why We do What We Do

We believe that education is a fundamental right and should not be limited by financial status. Where disadvantaged pupils start in life should not limit their life chances.

The Big Issue: Disadvantaged pupil outcomes are below those of their peers.

Following the pandemic the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils (as defined by the government) and their peers widened, wiping out a decade-worth of gains that had been made by the introduction of Pupil Premium funding for schools. 

The gap in attainment is stark. According to Government figures published on 11 September 2024, the ‘disadvantage gap index’ was at its widest since the 2010 to 2011 school year. This index measures the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and all other pupils. It showed that 25.2% of disadvantaged pupils and 52.4% of all other pupils got a grade 5 or above in their GCSE’s. 

In response to this dramatic widening of the attainment gap, the Government provided schools with funding to allow disadvantaged pupils to receive one-to-one tuition to close the attainment gap. Unfortunately, Government funding has now stopped but the gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers remains. 

Yellow Brick Rd - The Statistics

The Solution: One-to-One Tuition

However, we at Yellow Brick Rd believe this trend can be reversed and so do many others. The CEO of the Education Endowment Fund (EEF), Professor Becky Francis, commenting on the Educational Policy Institute Annual 2023* said: 

“Today’s report confirms that the link between family income and educational achievement has been further entrenched by the pandemic. Weakening this may seem like a near-impossible challenge, but we mustn’t forget that it can be done. Thanks to the hard-won efforts of schools, colleges and nurseries, we saw almost a decade of progress on closing the gap before 2019.”

 “If anything, today’s findings reaffirm just how important great teaching and learning opportunities are for disadvantaged children and young people.”

According to the EEF, tutoring leads to an extra 1+ grade of progress, on average, for every completed programme, making it a high-impact intervention. Furthermore, the EEF highlights that personalised, frequent and consistent small-group tuition sessions can help struggling learners to make around 4 months’ additional progress over the course of the academic year. Further reviews of studies carried out in England by the EEF have shown that disadvantaged pupils typically receive additional benefits from one-to-one tuition and that low-attaining pupils are particularly likely to benefit from this kind of support. 

The Sutton Trust agrees with the EEF. Their research shows that one-to-one and small group tuition are some of the most effective strategies to raise attainment. So effective is one-to-one tuition that the Sutton Trust highlighted that paying for private tuition on top of a child’s standard schooling is growing increasingly popular. But its use is creating a two-tier system, with wealthier families able to pay to secure their children advantages that poorer families simply cannot afford. For almost two decades, Sutton Trust research has highlighted the growth of private tutoring, access to which is heavily skewed towards the wealthy. The Sutton Trust’s findings further underline the need to enable greater access to tuition for disadvantaged pupils.

Our Funding Model

Simply put, we need you

We gather donations from private individuals and organisations. We release these privately raised funds to schools in tranches once we reach our funding goal, so that they can provide high quality one-to-one tuition to disadvantaged pupils through our tuition partner.

The funds are divided between the schools that we work with based on the percentage of disadvantaged pupils on their roll.

Visit our website to learn more about what we do

Yellow Brick Rd

Or enter custom amount

Show your support

Payment and personal details are protected