Primary · Dunstable, Bedfordshire · 177 pupils

Pupils placed at the level they need, not the year they’re in

“This is exactly what our pupils need. It’s been really good for plugging gaps.”

Pupils placed at the level they need, not the year they're in
Angela Kershaw, Maths Leader St. Augustine’s Academy, Dunstable, Bedfordshire
Years 5-6 after-school intervention groups
Own level lessons set by gap, not year group
Next year expanding to more pupils in the school day
178 pupils on roll
This case study is from our human tutoring, the tutor-led one-to-one programmes we ran before Skye, our AI maths tutor. Skye is built on the same principles and the same one-to-one approach, using insights from 2,295,000+ tutoring sessions like these.
Figures reported by the school in the original case study, from our human one-to-one tutoring programmes
The challenge

It’s the best type of intervention you could have

No matter how much of a good teacher you are, you can never get to 30 children on a one to one level. It just doesn’t work like that. You can’t set 30 different pieces of work, but that’s often what is needed. Because Third Space Learning provides additional one to one teaching at exactly their level, it’s allowed us to do exactly that.

Who it helped

We can put our children on the programme at the level they need

That’s what they need – especially after lockdown. Through no fault of their own, they’ve missed out on that learning. It’s hard for us as teachers as we know they might have covered a learning objective to an extent in the past but we can’t just tick it off and say ‘they can do that now’.

With Third Space Learning, our pupils have the opportunity to revisit anything they need to. We can put our children at the level that they need, rather than thinking ‘they’re in Year 5 so they’ve got to do Year 5 content’.

What changed

Third Space Learning really works for plugging those gaps

We’re really happy with how it’s going – it’s brilliant. You can then see it in class; the teacher no longer has to keep going back to certain concepts for certain pupils. They can work through the lesson as normal in the knowledge that the pupils who need it are getting the opportunity to plug their individual gaps with their tutor.

Our pupils are loving their sessions with their tutors.

They’re very much enjoying their sessions and they’re more than happy to attend. It’s been absolutely brilliant. We had a group of boys in Year 6 who didn’t really want to stay after school to learn, but by the time they’d done it, they really liked it. They thought it was something really different. They’re really in the swing of it now; they come into the room and set themselves up without being asked.

“No matter how much of a good teacher you are, you can never get to 30 children on a one to one level. It just doesn’t work like that. You can’t set 30 different pieces of work, but that’s often what is needed.”

What's next

We’re looking to use it for even more pupils next year

A school up the road from us use Third Space Learning too, but they use it slightly differently. We’ve chosen to run the lessons after school, but they use it as a lesson within the day as an intervention programme across Year 5 and 6. That’s what we’re thinking of doing next year too. The sessions themselves are really flexible – when we’ve had to reschedule lessons they’ve been credited without any issues, which is great.

Angela Kershaw, Maths Leader, St. Augustine's Academy

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St. Augustine’s Academy are a 177-pupil primary school in Dunstable, Bedfordshire.
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