From Traditional Tutoring to AI Tutoring: Helping More Pupils Catch Up In Maths

Since the beginning, we’ve believed in the power of one to one support to help close the attainment gap. But over time, we started to face a difficult truth: the one to one support we provided wasn’t reaching all the students who needed it. And the attainment gap in maths is as large as ever.

In 2024/25, the disadvantage gap at the expected standard in Key Stage 2 maths stood at 20 percentage points, the widest of any subject. By GCSE, the gap is wider still: disadvantaged pupils were 27.3 percentage points less likely than their peers to achieve a grade 5 or above in English and maths, a gap that hasn’t narrowed since the previous year and remains wider than before the pandemic. These figures show that, despite significant effort and investment, too many pupils are still falling behind, particularly in the context of stretched budgets and growing teacher workloads.

For over a decade, Third Space Learning has helped schools address these challenges through one to one online maths tutoring. And, while traditional tutoring remains a highly effective intervention, it’s no longer feasible for many schools to deliver it at the scale required to close the attainment gap.

That’s why we created Skye, the spoken AI tutor, not to replace teachers or tutors, but to provide affordable tutoring and one to one maths support for even more pupils.

AI tutoring vs traditional tutoring

Traditional tutoring delivers human rapport, nuanced questioning and encouragement, but costs and timetables limit its reach. The best AI tutors have the potential to serve unlimited pupils at any time, instantly diagnosing errors and adapting scripted prompts for consistent, curriculum-aligned practice. To create an effective learning environment, evidence suggests AI tutoring must use human teacher and subject specialist expertise.

It’s worth being straight about where the national picture sits, too. The DfE’s own position is that “evidence is still emerging on the benefits and risks of pupils and students using generative AI themselves”, and it has committed to working with schools to build that understanding. That’s precisely why we anchor AI tutoring in teacher expertise and the safeguards set out below, rather than treating it as settled science.

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Why it’s harder to make traditional tutoring work in schools

Maths gaps remain significant, but school budgets are tighter than ever, and there simply aren’t the additional staff members available to provide one to one school interventions. Traditional tutoring and interventions continue to be effective, but many schools are now struggling to afford them at the scale needed to help every pupil catch up and close the maths attainment gap.

After the pandemic, the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) helped schools offer specialist one to one support to more pupils than ever before. But when NTP funding ended, the budget pressures returned, while the need for personalised support remained. The attainment gap didn’t go away.

Inevitably, some pupils are now going without the one to one support they need.

If schools and tutoring providers want to offer high-quality subject specialist support to all the pupils who need it, we need to think more creatively.

Skye, the conversational AI tutor, created specifically to tutor primary and secondary school students in maths is our response to this challenge. You can read deputy headteacher and primary education expert, Neil Almond’s, independent review of Skye here and EdTech Ninja Jodie Lopez’s AI tutoring review here.

READ MORE: The EEF Tutoring Report

What a decade of tutoring insights told us had to change

Quality first teaching is undoubtedly the best way to help students progress. But for those who need extra support, one to one tuition is the best intervention strategy (EEF). 

And for over a decade, we’ve seen first-hand the positive impact personalised one to one support can have on pupils’ educational outcomes.

But we’ve also seen the barriers schools face in scaling this support:

• Traditional one to one tutoring, while effective, is hard to schedule and even harder to afford at scale
• School leaders are forced to decide which pupils get help, and which don’t
• Demand outstrips supply, especially when budgets tighten and funding falls away

We realised that if we were going to continue making a dent in the attainment gap, we couldn’t just do more of what we’d always done. We had to do things differently.

AI tutoring: helping us support more pupils, more equitably

In December 2023, our academic team and teaching experts began working on an idea: could we bring the impact of one to one tutoring to more pupils, at lower cost, without compromising on quality?

That idea became Skye – a conversational AI tutor grounded in real classroom pedagogy. Skye doesn’t replace teachers, it extends their reach and impact on pupil learning.

Skye, the AI tutor, gives pupils a consistent, responsive learning experience. It uses the same structured teaching approach as our traditional tutoring, including “I do, we do, you do” modelling, scaffolded support and real-time formative assessment.

However, unlike traditional tutoring, it can run at any time, for any number of pupils, without schools having to worry about cost per session or tutor availability. Its scalability means schools can support a large number of pupils simultaneously.

Built by teachers, backed by pedagogy

One of the first questions we asked ourselves when developing Skye was this: What makes our one to one tutoring work so well? 

The answer wasn’t just the presence of a traditional tutor but how those tutors were trained to teach. We knew that to replicate the benefits of one to one tutoring that success at scale, the foundations of teaching and learning had to come first.

That’s why Skye was built by our team of teachers, curriculum designers, and maths experts using everything we’ve learned from delivering more than 2 million live lessons to over 170,000 pupils. 

Every Skye session follows the same structure we know works:

• Explicit modelling and guided practice
• Formative checks for understanding throughout
• Carefully scaffolded steps to reduce cognitive load
• Encouragement of mathematical reasoning

How Skye mirrors traditional tutoring

Many AI tutoring tools focus on generating questions or automating marking. But Skye is a voice-based AI tutor, not text-based, and is designed to mirror the reasoning and interaction that happen in high-quality tutoring. 

Pupils speak their thoughts aloud, and Skye responds with real-time feedback. It adapts teaching using prompts, rephrasing questions and providing scaffolded hints, just like a traditional tutor would.

This approach builds maths fluency, confidence and independent thinking. And, it’s built on the same classroom-tested pedagogy we’ve developed for over a decade.

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Rethinking what’s possible in one to one tutoring

Since the end of the NTP funding, schools have told us the same thing again and again: We know tutoring works. We just can’t afford to do it for everyone who needs it.

This is where Skye makes the difference.

By removing the constraints of timetabling, tutor availability, and per-session costs, we’ve created a cost-effective model that schools can use as much as they need, without compromise.

• Sessions can start every five minutes – before, during or after school
• There’s no limit to the number of pupils supported simultaneously
• Pricing is fixed, so schools can add more pupils or sessions for no extra cost
• Lessons are consistently structured and quality-assured

Dialogue-driven AI maths tutoring offers a new kind of flexibility, one that meets the needs of schools while maintaining high standards. Every pupil deserves a consistent, structured path to progress.

“This innovative one-to-one maths tutoring solution offers a cost-effective alternative to traditional one-on-one tutoring.”

Chris Harris, Deputy Head,
Admirals Academy

READ MORE: How Schools Can Make The Most of AI Voice Tutoring: Five Practical Ways

Common concerns about AI tutoring and safeguarding

Of course, we understand that bringing AI into education, including AI in maths, raises valid questions.

At Third Space Learning, our approach to AI in schools and intelligent tutoring systems is always teacher-led, pedagogy-first and safety-aligned.

• All Skye sessions happen on a secure platform, approved and scheduled by schools
• Every interaction is recorded, and safeguarding alerts are automatically flagged and reviewed by our team
• All content is created by our academic team – nothing is left to chance

This also reflects what the DfE expects of any pupil-facing AI. Its guidance makes it clear that pupils should only use generative AI “with appropriate safeguards in place, such as close supervision and the use of tools with safety and filtering and monitoring features”, alongside schools’ duties on data protection, keeping children safe in education, and age restrictions. Skye is built to meet that bar: sessions are supervised and school-scheduled, recorded and monitored, and limited to approved maths content.

AI should never replace teachers. But it can ensure no pupil misses out on the support they need. It should be a tool for equity, giving schools the ability to reach more pupils with high-quality support, without sacrificing safety or standards.

For more on concerns about AI tutoring replacing teachers — and the tutor-vs-teacher distinction at the heart of the debate — see our response to the DfE pilot critics.

Why human-led AI tutoring is a sustainable solution for the future

The evolution from traditional to spoken AI tutoring isn’t about replacing teachers or tutors. It’s about freeing up teachers to do what they do best while ensuring no pupil is left without the support they need to thrive. Alongside one-to-one tutoring, schools are also turning to AI teaching assistants to cut marking, feedback and admin time in the classroom. Our voice-based AI maths tutoring brings together everything we’ve learned over the past decade into a flexible, affordable model that can scale across schools. 

Skye represents the future of scalable, personalised learning support. By making high-quality one to one maths tutoring accessible to every pupil who needs it, we can make significant progress in closing the attainment gap.

It’s a tool that takes the best of what we know works in teaching and makes it available to more learners than ever before. It doesn’t ask schools to change how they teach, it works alongside their existing priorities. And it’s grounded in the values that have defined Third Space Learning from the start:

• Equity
• Expertise
• Respect for the teacher’s role
• A deep understanding of how children learn

Our mission hasn’t changed. But the tools we use must evolve if we’re serious about reaching every pupil who needs us. With Skye, we’re one step closer to making that vision a reality.

Find out more about online one to one maths tutoring with Skye:
Online one to one primary AI maths tutoring
Online one to one GCSE AI maths tutoring

READ MORE:

• Best Online Tutoring Websites
• Best Online Maths Tutoring Platforms
• Online Tutoring Vs In-Person Tutoring
• AI Policy for Schools: Free Template and Step-by-Step Guide
• Supercharge Your Maths Teaching with ChatGPT & LLMs: Prompts, Tips, and Pitfalls
• The Best AI For Maths: A Comparison For Schools
• Best Online Tutoring Strategies
• 10 Benefits Of Online Tutoring

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