How to embed small-group tuition in Australian schools

A small crack in children’s foundational learning can be exacerbated as the years go on. Unless it’s addressed quickly, children get stuck in a vicious cycle, falling further and further behind their counterparts.

Which is where small-group tuition comes in.

Featuring host Kat Clay, with Julie Sonnemann, Principal Advisor, and Anika Stobart, Senior Associate.

Read the report

Transcript

Kat Clay: A small crack in children’s foundational learning can be exacerbated as the years go on. Unless it’s addressed quickly, children get stuck in a vicious cycle, falling further and further behind their counterparts. Which is where small group tuition comes in. In 2020, we released a significant report on the importance of COVID catch up to help disadvantaged students close the equity gap.

We’ve now released a new report on how to tackle underachievement more broadly by embedding high quality small group tuition in schools. And here to talk about these recommendations and why they’re needed are researchers Julie Sonneman and Anika Stobart. So, Julie, starting with you, I mean, how big is the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students?

And how is this exacerbated over time?

Julie Sonnemann: The gap in Australia between advantaged and disadvantaged students in education is really big and quite frankly, it’s a national disgrace. For example, in reading a disadvantaged student who is around nine years old in year three, you might come from a family where parents didn’t finish school or typically around two and a half years behind their more advantaged peers.

Of students who parents who have, for example, university degree, and we know that by year 9, that gap has grown to 5 years. So, in other words, the gap actually doubles between year 3 and year 9, according to the 2022 NAPLAN results. You know, and what’s concerning is that this gap is widening while kids are at school, while they’re on our watch.

You know, it’s true that children come to school often a little bit behind, but that, that gap widens even further over time. And school is supposed to be a place where all students have the opportunity to succeed. You know, not developing the basic skills in reading, writing, and maths, like these has real consequences for people’s lives.

we know that, you know, Students who tend to do less well at school tend to have, lower rates of going on to do further study, higher rates of being unemployed, poorer health outcomes, lower engagement with the community. But I think what’s really important to say here is that falling behind at school isn’t something that just only happens to students who might be experiencing disadvantage.

it happens to students across the socioeconomic spectrum. We know that in an international test that’s run by the OCD, Australia actually has Two and five students who fail to meet basic proficiency benchmarks in reading and maths by the age of 15. So that’s around 40 percent of students like this.

This impacts a lot of kids and while students from disadvantaged background. are overrepresented in that sample along with students from indigenous backgrounds and rural and regional and remote backgrounds. We also know that there are kids in there who might be from quite advantaged families or a variety, have a variety of reasons why they’re not keeping up at school.

and it’s really important to emphasize this because family background isn’t destiny and you know, this is about the quality of education that kids are receiving and we can do something about it.

Kat Clay: Yeah, absolutely, Julie. And I think that’s the thing is, you know, with a little bit of help, some of these students can absolutely excel at school and go on to do really great things.

So, Julie, I mean, what does this small group tuition look like and has it been found to be effective?

Julie Sonnemann: So small group tuition can look quite different to what a lot of people might think of when they think of tutoring in terms of after school tutoring that’s done once a week. small group tuition is actually, typically involves a qualified teacher or an experienced educator.

It’s done within the school during the school day. it can involve somewhere between two to five students and typically in quite short sessions that are done very frequently around three times or more over the course of a week and generally over one to two school terms. So, it’s very much seen as a short, targeted boost to learning to help kids catch up who may have fallen behind.

And we also know that it’s been shown to be one of the most effective education interventions from the evidence base. A 2021 review shows that it can add when it’s done well, it can add up to four months of learning over the course of a year, which is very high compared to other options for education interventions.

And the rationale for why it works so well is because tutors can actually work much more closely with students, very much targeted at their needs. adjusting content. And also, there’s a personal relationship that happens, obviously, between the tutor and the student, and it can be a really safe environment where students can feel like they can ask questions about misunderstandings, and that there’s someone that they trust who’s at school.

But it’s important to say while it can work, and the evidence is very strong, we know that not all small group tuition works in practice, and like anything, it depends on how it’s done and the detail, it depends very much on whether it’s evidence aligned. You know, a big thing is whether, you know, the quality of the instruction within the tutoring session itself.

We need to be using evidence-based literacy and numeracy approaches. And we also know that it needs to be done within a really systematic framework within a school. Not only does the quality of the tutoring need to be high, but also the quality of the classroom instruction also needs to be high too to Help prevent students from falling behind in the first place.

Tutoring can’t just simply be a band aid and it won’t work long term if students then just return to the classroom and continue to fall behind as they did initially. On the positive, I think in terms of implementation, we’ve just had this huge period of innovation with COVID and with tutoring programs in Victoria and New South Wales.

being majorly invested in. We’ve invested 1. 7 billion in the last two years and reached hundreds of thousands of students. We’ve learned a lot from that period of innovation about implementation. Also, around the world, there’s been big tutoring programs that have been rolled out in response to COVID.

So, now’s a really good time to be building on those learnings. And further testing and refining how to get implementation, right?

Kat Clay: Yes. And in the report, you identify a number of these kind of evidence-based studies that are either in progress or have been done around the world. And there’s some really interesting approaches to this tutoring that’s going on, including things like AI and personalized learning.

And it will be really interesting to see the results of some of those trials that are in place at the moment that are meant to be finishing up. You know, this year to see the results that come out of those. and it will be something that surely, we’ll be talking about when the time comes. Anika, we’ve also produced a principals and teachers guide for implementing small group tuition in schools.

And in the, you know, we really go through some of the common questions schools might have on how to deliver this tuition. And I mean, I’d just like you to go through some of those questions and, and what the evidence does say that we’ve found out.

Anika Stobart: You’re right, Kat. We have published a separate document, for school leaders.

to look at and be able to sift through this evidence really clearly summarized there. But I will run through some of those key questions that school leaders have when designing a program. Of course, the evidence, as you said, is still evolving, but there are some key things that we know make a tutoring program work and get the best outcomes for students.

The first one of those is how can schools go about selecting the students that need tutoring? So, we suggest that a catch-up program should be targeted as students that have fallen behind grade level standards. So, the key aim here is to choose students who would benefit from the short-term small group tuition program.

So, if a student is very far behind, maybe a more intensive one on one program is needed for them. Secondly, schools might need to consider what subjects and grade level their program should be targeted at. The evidence here is shows that it’s effective for both literacy and numeracy and at both primary school and secondary school, even though most of these programs tend to be rolled out in primary school.

Third, schools need to consider the right group size of the tutoring program. Typically, it’s around two to five students, as Julie mentioned before. Once you get beyond six, it tends to be less effective for obvious reasons. Another one is how often to schedule the sessions and for how long. What surprised me when I read the research was that one session a week isn’t going to get a student very far.

What they actually need is at least three sessions a week. Primary school students may also benefit from more frequent but even shorter sessions, such as 20-minute sessions five times a week. In terms of the length of a program, the evidence shows that it should be for at least 10 weeks. That’s about at least a school term, but it can be longer.

And lastly, looking at when and how the tutoring should be conducted. So, as Julie mentioned, more group tuitions take place during the school day usually, but that obviously then raises complications about how when they should be scheduled. Schools need to think carefully about how they time those sessions to make sure that the students don’t miss out on the subject of the tutoring, and maybe rotate the sessions so that they don’t miss the same classes each week.

Kat Clay: Julie mentioned cost effectiveness before. I mean, how can schools get the best return for the dollars they invest?

Anika Stobart: There are several ways that schools can reduce their costs. The cost of a tutoring program, while also maximizing outcomes for students. There are four key factors that we outline in our school leaders guide.

So firstly, school leaders can consider using non-qualified teachers, such as a teaching assistant. So, this can substantially reduce salary costs with only More reductions in the quality of teaching and learning the while, of course, teachers tend to get the best results. They’re teachers and they’re trained to do so.

We can have other trained educators. Do this role, but regardless of who they are, tutors need appropriate training and ongoing support. Secondly, another way that schools could consider managing cost is thinking of the size of the group. As I said before, you don’t want to go more than six necessarily, but a group of four students would cost about 25 percent less than a group of three students.

The best evidence to Groups of three provide the best value for money while ensuring quality, but researchers are still exploring this. The third element is looking at the frequency of a tutoring session. The evidence suggests that three sessions per week of up to an hour delivers good results. But doing more than this isn’t necessarily always better.

There is some evidence that suggests running sessions four to five times a week does not necessarily lead to more learning gains compared to three times a week, particularly for older students. And lastly, school leaders should consider delivering small group tuition using technology in various ways.

So, as you mentioned, Cat, as well, with the development of new AI materials, there’s, and as you also noted, there is, the evidence is emerging on this, but even just using high quality digital materials and assessments can improve the quality of small group instruction.

Kat Clay: Julie, I imagine this is a huge undertaking.

How can high quality programs be implemented across the entire country in every single school?

Julie Sonnemann: It’s a great question, Kat. It is hard to get right at scale. what we’re calling on is for governments and the non-government sector leaders to, to make a five year commitment to getting this right, so that it gives a bit of time to learn, test, and refine as we go, but within five years have a really concrete goal But this will be achieved in every school.

We see four key steps as part of that. So, the first step is really about taking stock of what works and translating it for schools. So, improving guidelines about how to do this well in the school. So, key to that is, as I’ve mentioned, the early identification of student needs, focus on prevention, and having really evidence based literacy approaches within the tutoring session itself.

The second step is around identifying where schools are at. So, what supports do schools need to do this well? What do they struggle with? And to do that, we’re suggesting a really deep review in a small number of schools, maybe somewhere between 25 to 50 schools in every state and territory. So that, and then really acting on those findings to make sure that governments and sector leaders are actually putting the right supports in place.

Third, filling in some of the gaps on the evidence. So, while and it has talked to, you know, there’s a lot of solid evidence around what does work with, there are still gaps, particularly just in the details. So, for example, we know teaching assistants can get good results with structured programs and resources, but exactly which structured programs and resources, there’s still a lack of information there.

There’s lots of those types of questions. We’re suggesting an investment of 10 million in research over the next five years. In years, a big issue there is around cost effectiveness. So really testing some of those cost drivers that Anika also spoke to. We’re going to get this in every school and for it to be realistic, we need to know how to do this.

In a way that makes the dollar go as far as possible. And also, because there’s, you know, there’s, there’s practical, workforce constraints. We know that there are teacher shortages across the country. So, we are going to have to be creative in our solutions and exactly who is a tutor and what training support they receive.

We can look to countries like the U S that are doing this type of research really well. And the fourth step is really around state and territory governments. But also seizing the opportunity that’s currently underway to make a national commitment. So, there’s the National Schools Reform Agreement, which is currently under negotiation, and that’s an agreement between the Commonwealth and state government, state territory governments around Australia about the education reform directions for the next five years.

We think that’s a really key opportunity. To make a commitment to getting small group tuition, right. it’ll be negotiated by December 2024. And while states can do a lot independently, I think a national commitment will be useful because particularly from research, an evidence-based building perspective, it just means we can learn a lot faster.

It means that every state and territory can learn from one another, and we can really fine tune implementation, much faster together.

Kat Clay: So previous Grattan research has shown how. Overloaded teachers are already at the moment. Is a tutoring program adding more workload to these already overloaded teachers?

Julie Sonnemann: It’s true that teachers are completely swamped. we’d argue that small group tuition is a core part of teaching and effective teaching and learning. And therefore, that’s the thing that actually teachers need more time for. It is true though that, that setting up small group tuition is Does require a bit of a time investment from teachers, you know, they need to work out which students to select exactly what their needs are.

They need to work together with tutors to plan sessions, monitor students. Teachers rightly do need the time and headspace to be able to. To learn how to do this well, one of the big factors from our own research is that, that’s a big driver of teacher workload is that teachers feel like they’re struggling with the complexity in the classroom, that there’s a lot of kids who have high needs that they just can’t reach.

Small group tuition actually helps the teacher with that. It’s, you know, currently we have these huge expectations of teachers of what they’ll realistically be able to do themselves and to be able to personalise learning for every student. That’s not possible. This is actually really recognising you need a team approach to great teaching and learning, that teachers actually do need to be working closely with other professionals to meet the needs of students.

So longer term, we really see this as a way of managing teacher workload. And also, when it’s working well, there should be fewer students who need small group tuition every year. if fewer students are falling behind, then that just means, you know, down the track teachers Aren’t being presented with students who have really complex and entrenched needs anymore.

Kat Clay: Yeah, I remember that being one of the results that came out of some of our teacher surveys that we’ve done is that, you know, biggest concern is that just is such a huge diversity of needs across the classroom, that it becomes really difficult to produce lesson plans that meet the needs of, all the students from the top students to the ones who are struggling.

You’re right in that the tutoring could help with that. One of the questions I do ask. Most of our Grattan programs, when we come up with new solutions, they do cost money to implement. Is this expensive, Anika? And I mean, what’s the cost versus return on investment?

Anika Stobart: It’s moderately expensive compared to other education interventions because it is resource intensive, but we believe that it is worth it.

effective small group tuition can produce big benefits for students lives, the education shown to positively impact on future study, work, self-reported health outcomes, community engagement, as well as greater social cohesion generally, but also the economic benefits are there. They are huge. So, we estimated that if one in five students received high quality small group tuition in 2023, they would collectively earn an extra six billion dollars over their lifetimes.

So that’s about six times the annual cost of tutoring programs.

Kat Clay: Yes, and I’ve seen in my own family, the power of education to exceed personal circumstances. And I think it’s really important that we remember that education allows people to achieve more than perhaps that their original circumstances allow.

So, it’s a really powerful way that people can transform their lives through education. If you’d like to read this report, you can find it on our website at grattan.edu.au for free, and the same goes for our school leaders and teachers guide. It’s right there on the same page as our report. Before we wrap up, we would really like to thank the generous support of the Origin Energy Foundation in producing this report.

It would not be possible without their help, and we’re very grateful for that support. If you’d like to talk to us on social media about this report or any of our other education work, please find us on Twitter at Grattan Inst and all other social media channels at Grattan Institute. And as always, please take care and thanks so much for listening.