From disruption to transformation

We started Tutorfair Foundation with a simple promise: One-For-One tutoring. For every student who could afford to pay for tutoring, another who couldn’t would receive it for free. The goal was straightforward; talent and ambition shouldn’t be limited by resources.

As the idea caught on, thousands of volunteers stepped forward to help students who might otherwise miss out, and the impact was immediate. Young people gained confidence, improved their grades, and felt supported at a time when it mattered most.

To make tutoring easier to access, the Foundation also experimented with technology, building an on-demand app that could connect a student to a tutor in under 20 seconds.

Then came the pandemic.

Everything changed overnight. Schools shut down. Mobility was impossible and it seemed like learning would come to a halt for many students.

As we took stock, we saw that being small and agile, with capacity to build tech solutions, put us at an advantage. Within a month, the team rallied to move the entire programme online. While tutoring online wasn’t new, running a national volunteer programme that way was. New systems had to be built for scheduling, training, safeguarding, and support, and they had to be built fast.

What could have been a setback became an unexpected breakthrough.

Going fully online meant geography was no longer a barrier. Students from anywhere in the country could get help, not just those near participating schools. Sessions could be recorded, reviewed, and improved. The programme became more consistent, more responsive, and more scalable.

Volunteers found it easier to fit tutoring into busy lives without travel, often committing to shorter sessions more regularly. Students adapted remarkably well too, fewer than 1% said online learning made them anxious. Even during the height of disruption, Tutorfair Foundation ran a fully online summer school, providing stability when many young people needed it most.

By the time schools began returning to normal, the organisation had changed for the better. The systems we built for connecting, monitoring, recording and supporting now allowed us to help more than 500 students a week, far more than we were ever able to do before the pandemic.

What started as an emergency pivot became a lasting strength.