Project

Many of the measures that are currently being implemented in the school system to contain the coronavirus pandemic have a negative impact on children with social, economic, and language disadvantages. The situation particularly affects children whose parents cannot help them acquire the language skills they need to succeed in education. Remote learning and limited on-site teaching leaves them without opportunities for in-person language practice, an essential factor in language acquisition. The Tutoring for All project was launched to counteract the risk of deepening existing inequalities between children with and without socio-economic disadvantages.

It seeks to develop additional measures accompanying efforts made at school to compensate for the consequences of the pandemic. Ultimately, these measures should be integrated into regular school activities as a permanent tool for improving equality in education.

The project focuses on establishing a tutoring-based language development program that can accompany regular classes under the instruction of qualified personnel. It is based on the program Tutoring with the Lightning Squad, a globally renowned, highly rated and proven school development program run by the Success for All Foundation.

We will be adapting the digital project platform for German to carry out the project. The tutors who will be working with elementary-age children are recent university graduates, and they will obtain their first professional qualifications within the scope of this project.

Prof. Dr. Ingrid Gogolin and her team seek to determine whether the model can be applied to the German educational system and which steps are needed to get the ball rolling. The objective of the project is to develop an academically sound tutoring program that has proven benefits in its original version. It is intended as a concrete support measure for disadvantaged children at German schools not just during times of crisis but in the long term.

The project will run until November 2021 with €49,000 in funding from the ExStra funds of Universität Hamburg.