D.During the 2021/22 school year, over 600 students were helped to study by the program TOP – Online Tutoring Programpromoted by Cariplo Foundation. Result: 3 months of tutoring had an effect on academic performance equal to 9 months of learning. Furthermore, 73 per cent of the beneficiaries believed that the experience was very useful, as emerged from the impact assessment of the Bocconi University. With these successes, TOP now restarts and relaunches: in addition to Bocconi and Bicocca, responsible for the training of tutors, in 2022/23 all the Lombard universities (apart from San Raffaele) will be added, for a total of 12. And the aim is to involve high school students.
TOP, the online tutoring program to help middle school students in difficulty, is looking for young volunteers for 2022/23. Getty Images
But how does TOP work? “It is aimed at the most fragile students of lower secondary schools, Lombardy and Verbano Cusio Ossola»Explains project manager Alessandro Masciadri. «The schools are selected on the basis of the index of those most in difficulty prepared by the Cariplo Foundation. Pupils and female students are indicated by teachers. In the last school year we had 2400 students reported, but we were able to follow only 600. For this reason we would now like to expand the number of volunteers, which in 21/22 were 450, in order to reach more children, maintaining the same quality of service. The program started on an experimental basis in 2020, to counter the decline in learning due to the pandemic and distance learning. Effects that continue to manifest even today. We need to intervene in a massive way ».
This year, therefore, there will be two modules: the first is from November to January, registrations are open until 24 October, on the TOP website. The second will be from March to May, and recruitment will start in February.
Tutors are volunteer university students who are trained on pedagogical content, while CIAI follows them for the Child Protection Policy, to ensure the safety of relations between tutors and tutees. In any case, tutors can refer to supervisors, also trained by Bicocca, for any need. What does tutoring consist of? «You connect to a platform for three hours a week, for a maximum of three subjects, mathematics, Italian and English, identified by the beneficiary and his teacher. We exchange materials, do exercises », continues Masciadri.
The novelty is in wanting to involve high school students as volunteers, “as an activity within the PCTO, the former school-work alternation”, continues Masciadri, “to strengthen the relationship between peers, without bringing the age of tutors and tutees too close. . For the sixth grade tutee we are looking for a third grade tutor, and so on. For now we have made contact with about thirty high schools, but if it works we will increase the activities. The quality of TOP is excellent, it would be right to extend it to help more boys and girls at risk of dispersion ».
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