Volunteering on Schools Plus

A Tutor Support Officer’s Perspective

We couldn’t run our Schools Plus programme without our volunteer Tutor Support Officers! But what do they do? Find out in the blog post from our Operational Officer below!

A bit about Schools Plus:

Oxford is a very unequal city — 64% of pupils on free school meals fail to attain the expected standards in reading, writing and maths. (EDUCATIONAL PERFORMANCE KEY OUTCOMES 2017/18)

Schools Plus is Oxford Hub’s tutoring programme for children and young people in Oxfordshire. It matches pupils with university student/graduate volunteers, retired teachers and those with work-related subject knowledge and experience. Schools Plus aims to provide supplementary tutoring that can guide a pupil’s learning outside of the classroom. The programme supports local pupils in Year 3 — Year 13. This includes tutoring KS3, KS4 and KS5 pupils in English, Maths, Foreign Languages, Humanities and Science. As well as KS2 primary school pupils in Maths, Science, and Literacy. Through regular tutoring sessions, the tutoring pairs work together to help pupils reach their full academic potential!

The Schools Plus programme is part of Oxford Hub’s wider strategy to build a more equal and resilient Oxford through community programmes; ensuring everyone who lives here is able to thrive, participate in their communities and create systemic change.

Find out how you can get involved with Schools Plus here.

A Volunteer’s Perspective:

Hi, I’m Ozan! :)

I’m a volunteer Operational Officer at Schools Plus, a role I began at the beginning of February. Having done some volunteering in Bristol during my Gap Year, I really wanted to continue volunteering in some way in Oxford which is the reason I applied to work for Schools Plus!

Basically, what I do is work alongside the other lovely members of the Schools Plus team to manage the online platform and support our tutors and tutees. This involves a lot of emailing to check how things are going and also reading the reports written by our tutors after every session, giving me the opportunity to see the amazing progress made throughout their tutoring partnerships! These reports have shown me how much of a difference just a weekly session of tutoring can make for pupils, not just by reinforcing their academic knowledge but also by offering that extra confidence which pushes them to excel.

I would recommend this role — or any other opportunity to volunteer for Schools Plus! — to anyone who wants to make a difference in their local community, and particularly anyone interested in educational inequalities. Being part of the Schools Plus team is especially brilliant because you have a brilliant vantage point from which to see the academic progress and personal development of tutors and tutees, which is really rewarding! But also, the regular correspondence we have with tutors has really helped me develop my communication skills. And finally, the volunteering work is not a large time commitment, allowing me to do it comfortably alongside my studies!