If you use offline methods, online education works

A new all online tutoring program in Spain, a world first, has delivered stunning results.

In the Menttores program, one group of students received online tutorials in small groups after school; the other, the control group, did not. The former group had a 30% higher pass rate in maths and an overall 75% lower probability of repeating the school year. And this even when the tutorials lasted only for eight weeks.

But what makes this even more remarkable is that the program, a joint effort of EmpiezaxEducar (ExE) and EsadeEcPol, was aimed at vulnerable students. More than 40% of the students came from families with incomes of less than 1,000 € per month; Almost 50% were of immigrant origin, and 28% were from single-parent families.

Why is this such a big deal? First, educational experts have been warning that school closures will have a terrible effect on educational attainment. Secondly, study after study thus far has shown that online education is not a great leveller but tends to favour students from wealthy and educated families. So, the natural fear was that worldwide school closures and the move online created the conditions to reproduce more inequality in our societies.

Studies are starting to confirm these fears. In an extensive thread on Twitter this Monday, Toni Roldán, director of EsadeEcPol, highlighted the hard evidence. One of them is a large study in Belgium on the effects of school closures during standardized student test scores at the end of primary school.??

The results were depressing. Students of the 2020 cohort experienced significant learning losses in all subjects they tested. Furthermore, the study puts this loss into context by noting that raising student achievement by a similar order of magnitude causes, on average, a 2.6% increase in annual lifetime earnings. These effects are therefore significant and could shape our societies for years to come. Moreover, these effects were significantly worse in poorer households and not as bad in well-to-do families, confirming the fear of growing inequality in educational attainment.

Another recent study from the Netherlands considered a "best-case" scenario underlines these divergent outcomes between rich and poor students. Here they had a short lockdown, equitable school funding, and world-leading broadband access rates. Yet, the study found despite these favorable conditions, students made little or no progress while learning from home. As was feared, learning loss was most pronounced among students from disadvantaged homes. Those in the two lowest categories of parental education suffered losses 40% larger than the average student.

This is why the Menttores project is such a breakthrough. Of course, we had ample evidence that face to face tutoring in small groups worked for some time. But as far as we know, this is the first time a 100% online tutoring program by professionals, using a specific methodology, is tried and tested anywhere in the world.

To make it successful ExE trained 45 paid mentors and several volunteers, all of them professional teachers. Miriam Arriola, training director of the ExE, disclosed to El Pais the critical ingredients for its success: They demanded the (teachers) to have pedagogical and digital skills and trained them to be socio-emotionally sensitive. In other words, the soft skills of how to lift the self-confidence of students.

And it did. Besides the better academic results, pupils participating in Menttores were 31% more likely to want to continue studying an academic track in upper secondary school (post-compulsory secondary schooling) than those who did not. And satisfaction with school amongst pupils taking part in Menttores improved considerably (7% compared to the control group). Remarkable considering the widespread reports of the negative impact of school closures on students emotional state.

These results have passed all expectations. And as Toni Roldán says, it showed that online tutoring in small groups could work exceptionally well. This opens up the possibility of designing more affordable programs than those delivered face-to-face, matching skills with need, wherever there is sufficient broadband access.

These are tremendous results, and societies, governments, and businesses worldwide should take note. If we do not want the pandemic to leave yet another significant long term scar, we need urgent interventions, implementing such programs with haste. And it gives us a powerful tool towards delivering more equal education in the future.