This study is evaluating the Affordable Maths Tuition (AMT) intervention, delivered by Third Space Learning. The aim of AMT is to reduce the maths attainment gap for disadvantaged pupils, by recruiting and training specialist maths tutors in India and Sri Lanka to make online one-to-one tuition more affordable and accessible to children in English state schools. Importantly, the programme is specifically designed to make it easy and accurate for teachers to use online tuition within the school timetable to support their class teaching strategies. Each pupil receives their own dedicated tutor and learning is personalised to meet their needs, helping pupils not only to make progress, but grow in confidence too.
The eligibility criteria for this study is children who have or have had a social worker. This cohort of children have significantly lower attainment than their peers. It is therefore crucial to identify effective interventions that close the attainment gap in primary education to stop these pupils falling behind.
This research builds on a report WWCSC released in February 2020 which revisited 63 trials funded by the Education Endowment Foundation to determine what works in education for children who have had social workers. AMT was one of the ten interventions that the research identified as showing signs of potential for children’s social care (CSC) experienced children, and which warranted further research.
The evaluation is a two-armed randomised controlled trial with 855 pupils (in 235 schools and 53 Local Authorities). Participants will be assigned to receive AMT (intervention) or business as usual (control). The primary research question is: What is the impact of Affordable Maths Tuition on children who have had a social worker on Key Stage 2 maths attainment? The secondary research question is: What is the impact of Affordable Maths Tuition on children who have had a social worker on maths anxiety in mathematical tasks?
The study also includes an implementation and process evaluation (IPE) which will explore the delivery of the AMT programme. Findings will provide important information in which to contextualise and understand the results of the impact analysis. Specifically, the IPE aims to build a detailed understanding of the intervention and to help explain any identified intervention effects.
Finally, the study will carry out a cost analysis to estimate the cost based on the current service fees for AMT and delivery costs for schools.