Online tutorials enhance maths pass rate by more than 30% and help reduce likelihood of repeating a year at secondary school by 75%

Academic and socio-emotional impact

Menttores involved 52 mentors and almost 400 pupils in ESO years 1 and 2 from in 18 state-run and subsidised schools in the Madrid region and Catalonia (Barcelona and Lleida) with pupils from highly deprived backgrounds hit hardest by covid-19. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) was used to assess Menttores and identify its causal impact which was, in the words of the programme directors, “remarkably positive in terms of both the learning and personal development of pupils.” In April and May 2021, the children in the intervention group were given maths catch-up sessions and socio-emotional support in three, fifty-minute, online tutorials a week, whilst those in the control group were not.

In academic terms, it must be said that the year-end marks in maths of pupils taking part in Menttores improved by 17% compared to the control group: the equivalent of catching up six months of learning. They also had a 30% higher pass rate in this subject. The pupils taking these tutorials had 17% better results in the maths test designed by the Empieza por Educar team and, in general, the number of pupils in this group obliged to repeat a year fell 75% compared to the control group.

In terms of social and emotional considerations and aspirations, pupils participating in Menttores were 31% more likely to want to continue studying baccalaureate than those in the control group. Likewise, the likelihood of pupils saying they made at effort at school was 19% higher amongst those in the programme.

Miriam Arriola, pedagogical director of the project, explained: “We wanted to apply our teaching experience to the online tutorials because the greatest challenges are in fact the same: the ability to motivate, create trust and generate high expectations. To do so we worked with qualified teachers specially trained for this programme”.

Claudia Hupkau, CUNEF professor and co-author of the report was quite clear, “Unless effective public policies are implemented to counteract this situation, the wider education gap caused by the pandemic will result in a loss of opportunities, social cohesion and economic growth in the future”.

A unique opportunity

According to the Menttores directors, the finance available in the form of EU funds is a unique opportunity to implement an educational catch-up programme far superior to the one announced by Spain’s government and autonomous regions (PROA+) consisting of €360m of investment over three years. The specific proposal outlined in the report of the programme results, “is to increase this figure tenfold up to €3.6bn in three years. Looking ahead, tutorial programmes rigorously assessed beforehand should become a staple of all governments’ education policies. Few investments have such great returns as scaling up a programme of this type. Extrapolating just part of the Menttores results, i.e. the success in reducing the numbers of pupils who repeat a year, would save the government some 1.2bn per annum”.

The results of the Menttores programme were presented on Tuesday 21 at CaixaForum Madrid. Participants included Alejandro Tiana, secretary of state for education, Cristina Garmendia, president of Fundación COTEC and former minister of science and innovation, and Fátima Báñez, president of Fundación CEOE and former minister of employment and social security. Joining them were Koldo Echebarria, director general of Esade; Beatriz Morilla and Miguel Costa García, directora general and director of institutional relations at Empieza Por Educar, respectively; Ana Hernández, general secretary of the association Mejora tu Escuela Pública and Ismael Sanz, professor of applied economics; all of whom will take part in the discussion scheduled during the event. Four of the programme directors also attended: Toni Roldán, director of EsadeEcPol; Miriam Arriola, director of the ExE  programme; Lucas Gortazar, director of education at EsadeEcPol; and Claudia Hupkau, professor at CUNEF.