Affordable Online Maths Tuition. Evaluation report and executive summary

Affordable Maths Tuition is a one to one tutoring programme where pupils receive maths tuition over the internet from trained maths graduates in India and Sri Lanka. It is delivered by the organisation Third Space Learning (TSL). Tutors and pupils communicate using video calling and a secure virtual classroom. Before each session, the pupils’ normal classroom teachers are able to select lessons from Third Space Learning’s maths curriculum to target individual learning issues. In this evaluation, the tutoring sessions took place once a week, at the same time each week. The intervention was targeted at Year 6 pupils who were working at Key Stage 2 level 3 or an insecure KS2 level 4, and was delivered over 27 weeks from September 2014 to May 2015 by Third Space Learning (TSL) in an initial testing phase, with support from Nesta and Nominet Trust. The impact of the intervention was evaluated using a randomised controlled trial design, involving 64 schools and 600 pupils. Schools were randomised to either receive the intervention or deliver 'business as usual’ teaching, which might have involved intensive one to one support for maths. A process evaluation was undertaken to understand the perceptions of teachers and pupils, assess whether the intervention was delivered as intended, and inform any future development of the intervention. The evaluation should be considered an efficacy trial. Efficacy trials aim to test whether the intervention can succeed under ideal conditions.