RARA – Raising Awareness, Raising Aspirations

Who we are

RARA is a project funded by the HEFCE Catalyst Fund, dedicated to improving personal tutoring as a means for narrowing gaps in student achievement.

We represent a diverse coalition of universities committed to closing our attainment gaps, specifically for students from BME groups, and lower socio-economic backgrounds.

Source: TUoS analysis of UUK Universities/National HESA data

We know the difference effective personal tutoring might make to students’ personal and education outcomes: the project hopes to capture this learning so universities can make evidence-informed decisions about personal tutoring.

Through this project we are going to draw on existing best practice, pilot a targeted approach to personal tutoring, in a diverse range of faculties: Engineering (Sheffield), Dentistry (King’s), and Creative and Cultural Industries (Portsmouth).

What are we going to do

Learning from the pilots we engage with we will share our experience and knowledge with the sector through:

An evidence-based best practice toolkit and CPD package to tackle closing the attainment gap, which can be rolled out nationally to support PT (personal tutoring), aligned to national HE CPD frameworks.

A National Best Practice Support Menu, which will provide ‘courses’ of reflection drawn from the three diverse institutions and subject areas, enabling scalability, and empowering staff to ‘test’ varied approaches. Each ‘course’ on the menu will tackle a ‘wicked issue’ connected to deploying personal tutoring frameworks that work to reach all students.

Added-value research, evaluation into attainment gaps and personal tutoring. With a big data set being generated, and a team of leading and talented HE researchers supporting the project, the opportunities for sharing additional research and insight with the sector are numerous!

Our full website will launch later this month, but in the meantime follow us on twitter, and join our mailing list to keep up-to-date, learn more, and build connections.

Raising Awareness,Raising Aspiration

Who we are

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Raising Awareness,
Raising Aspiration