FFT Tutoring with the Lightning Squad is a reading catch-up programme where pupils work in small groups with a tutor to improve their reading skills. The tutoring is a blended approach with face-to-face tutoring supported by an online tutoring platform.

The tutoring activities are designed and structured to improve reading skills: phonics, segmenting and blending, fluency and comprehension. Pupils work through 100 specially written, engaging and illustrated stories with a tutor.

Yes, absolutely. The system is based on a Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) approach to teaching literacy and it sits comfortably alongside and complements all the widely used SSP teaching programmes (Read Write Inc., Letter & Sounds, Jolly Phonics, etc.)

All pupils take a short online reading assessment at the start of the tutoring programme to help the class teacher decide which groups of pupils should work together and at what point in the programme they should start.

Regular checks are built into the programme where pupils complete a set of reading activities related to what they have been learning. The teacher will then decide whether pupils are ready to move on to the next story in the tutoring programme.

Research has demonstrated that pupils make learning gains of between 3 and 5 months in reading attainment when using TWL. This was demonstrated in 2021 when we delivered tutoring to 25,000 pupils as part of the National Tutoring Programme; since then, we have delivered to over 60,000 pupils in over 1000 schools. There has also been independent research carried out in both the USA and the UK which supports evidence of this increase in learning gains for pupils accessing Tutoring with the Lightning Squad.

Our internal data report shows pupils make, on average, 3-4 months' progress in reading fluency after six weeks of catch-up and three times as much progress as children not accessing any catch-up programme. Some pupils may benefit from more than six weeks of catch-up so, as part of your National Tutoring Programme package, we will give you free access to the programme for a further ten weeks so you can deliver more sessions yourself. We will train members of your staff for free to take over the tutoring and continue the tutor's work once they have completed the placement.

You can log into FFT's Tutoring with the Lightning Squad from any device – Chromebooks, laptops or PCs. Sound is important, so use speakers or devices with good volume to ensure the pupils can hear the audio.

Due to the interactive nature of the programme and with pupils working closely together, we’d advise avoiding iPads and tablets as the screen size tends to be a bit small and the volume too quiet.