Vertical Tutoring Home

Schools where the LT and staff are fully informed, supported and trained...

1. Form a far more effective & integrated management team structure that is focused on learning and teaching (re-engineered LT)

2. Have tutors who are confident and effective in their critical front-office mentoring role (potent and supportive learning relationships)

3. See improvements in both student self-esteem and learning outcomes through enhanced leadership / mentoring opportunities for all (better outcomes)

4. Create a more effective learning support operation that redefines what it is to care and a focus on 'the whole child' ( beyond ECM)

5. Build improved parent partnership and organisationally support the critical role played by families & peers in learning (improved parent partnership)

6. Experience a happier and more successful school which understands and promotes well-being implicitly (improved ethos and wellbeing)

7. Celebrate the effectiveness of staff, children and parents where all understand the operational learning & support system and contribute to it (creative & fun)

8. Give students deep support and learning opportunities that will make them far more effective learners (everyone a mentor and learner)

9. Raise the quality of teaching and learning (understand the critical link between tutoring and the quality of teaching and learning)

Welcome

to the TRAINING & INFORMATION site for Vertical Tutoring. This website is a response to the many individuals and schools that want to learn more about the organisational support culture of Vertical Tutoring and use VT to improve student outcomes and enhance the quality of teaching and learning. This includes understanding and developing the critical links between VT, personalisation and parent partnership. To do this involves engaging and redefining the ECM agenda (every Child Matters UK) and NCLB (No Child Left Behind USA) in a more holistic way. It also means 'unlearning' much of what we take for granted in our management of schools.

Information

Downloads and draft papers on VT are available via the link to the Times Ed www.tes.co.uk website where they are now stored (See VT Papers Page). The bespoke advice and training programme, set out below in outline, is the only comprehensive guide to getting VT right and is based on 25 years of experience, research and liaison with leading thinkers here and in the USA. Training and briefings are designed to ensure that schools...

a) Understand the inherent values and management principles of VT needed to best enable transformation to a learning culture

b) Build a new focus around parent partnership and student support to improve outcomes

c) Holistically redefine what it is to 'care' to reduce system complexity and improve management and leadership

d) Understand how VT works to ensure deep learning, deep support and deep leadership opportunities

e) Return personal tutors to their rightful leader of learning role at the heart of the school

f) Are driven by values and principles that improve learning capacity, attitudes and behaviour

The definitive guide to Vertical Tutoring is available in either book form or kindle from www.Amazon.co.uk

NB It is simply no good going vertical without a deep understanding of the principles and values that drive this cultural transformation, yet this is what many schools do. Many think that VT is a simple change to the pastoral system. However, it is the way we set-up and prepare staff, students and parents for VT that is critical. Essentially what VT does is provide a new learning support operation that replaces the year/grade factory model and adds operational coherence to managing teaching and learning. It builds value in and requires no social programmes and no cost other than time to learn. It transforms the culture of schools by positively building inclusive learning relationshipsand partnerships by simple changes to the way a school organises itself. Schools that self train rarely get VT right and this causes problems; similarly with schools that ignore management principles (ignorance and arrogance). Some schools, however, have reverted back to year systems having misunderstood or been ignorant of the way VT works as a system. This is explained by saying, 'VT never worked for us'. What schools mean is they never bothered with effective training and assumed they somehow knew it all inately! This is always an unneccessary tragedy but then school systems are built on assumptions .

VERTICAL TUTORING uses the power of mixed age students and parents to enhance learning and switch a child's aspiration gene to the 'on' position. It does this by carefully intervening in negative ingroup loyalty behaviours to create new learning relationships that are open to experience and to learning. The new loyalty groups comprise other students, peers, parents , teachers and most critically of all, the child's tutor. The only change to the school's modus operandi is to introduce 20 minute mixed age tutor session, usually once a day. This small and carefully managed change has a domino effect resulting in a complete transformation of the school's learning culture and capability providing the school re-engineers the organisation around these newly formed tutor groups . It requires no taught programmes and no cost. It does require a little understanding of systems thinking, customer care and ingroup positive psychology. In the end, the school as an organisation is quickly recreated based on values and sound management principles. The factory school orthodoxies and all its associated wrong assumptions transform to an organisation where all parties know what to do and why and how. In effect, VT reshapes ingroup loyalty to form supported learning relationships and a values led school.