If someone asked 38-year-old Matthew* if he could read and write, his answer would always be the same: “No.”

However, when Matthew first came to Kent County Council’s adult education provision, Community Learning and Skills (CLS), initial assessments proved that his answer was not strictly true.

Matthew knew the rough order of the alphabet. He knew which letters were at the beginning, and which were at the end, but he got lost in the middle. He knew the hard and soft sounds and the letters they correlated to. He was aware of social sight words and recognised common signs and words.

And yet, Matthew believed himself to be completely illiterate; his lack of confidence was deeply entrenched. He hadn’t worked for years and his overwhelming self-doubt prevented him from applying for any job or training scheme.

He did have a goal, though: he desperately wanted to become a car mechanic. So he started a functional skills English entry-level course at CLS to improve his reading, writing and maths so that he could apply for mechanic training.

How do you take learners like Matthew, who have suffered a lifetime of crippling self-doubt, and turn them into effective, independent learners who are ready for the workplace?

The answer, we decided, was dedicated one-to-one support. But individual help is expensive - and as a council-run provision, our resources are limited. We realised that a team of volunteers could provide the extra support that our learners needed.

Around the same time, we saw that the Education and Training Foundation was providing some funding for an action research project into independent learning. It seemed the ideal chance to try out a new approach to supporting Matthew and his peers.

So, we recruited a team of four volunteers, who, in exchange for their time, received training and mentoring. The volunteers came from all walks of life - for example, one was a retired manager and another a single mum - and all were united behind a common goal: to empower learners and improve their lives.

The volunteers were given a three-day induction course and were allocated tutors and mentors to support them and offer individualised, appropriate support.

With the team in place, we set up a pilot in September last year. We identified learner needs and organised a timetable and supporting infrastructure. To measure progress, we developed a learner self-assessment form and a volunteer record of support to monitor progress from both learner and volunteer perspectives.

The self-assessment form was designed to facilitate an initial discussion between learners and volunteers. On the left-hand side of the form, there were statements split into three categories: achievements; social, personal growth; and British values.

Achievement statements included “I can work well on my own” and “I am good at spelling”; social statements were things like “I am a confident person” and “I am tolerant of other people”. A couple of the personal growth ones were “I don’t give up easily on things” and “I try to maintain a healthy lifestyle”. British values statements included “I make my own choices in life” and “I don’t tolerate discrimination”.

Learners had to assess themselves against these statements - there were 23 in all - and tick whether they felt they matched the statements always, often, sometimes, rarely or never. There was also a box for comments.

Interestingly, we found that social skills were often affected by technical ones. Matthew, for example, said: “I am not always assertive because my spoken English is poor.”

When working through the self-assessment tool with learners, volunteers opened a dialogue and found out more about the learner’s life outside of the centre, their interests and hobbies.

For instance, Sandra, the volunteer working with Matthew, found out that he loved films. As the self-assessment tool highlighted that he also really struggled with reading, she encouraged him to read DVD cases before choosing which films to watch.

It wasn’t long before he was recognising actors’ names, spelling them out for himself and working out the gist of plots from word recognition and matching letters to sounds. Matthew told Sandra that he was no longer frightened of reading. In fact, he gained so much confidence that he started to contribute in discussion in his main class. Within three weeks, his tutor reported that he had led a discussion and “held court”.

As his confidence grew, so did his willingness to try. Within six weeks, he had gone from not reading and writing at all to working at entry level 2. Sandra played a vital role in that: she identified his passion for films and used that as a springboard to learning.

Matthew is not the only one who has moved on by leaps and bounds. When 45-year-old Jamal* first came to the centre, she could speak very little English. As a Syrian refugee, she found it really tough to understand instructions and the customs of the UK. Derek*, her assigned volunteer, has been brilliant with her. He explains new vocabulary and ensures that she understands the tasks set and that she has the time and space to practise prayer when she needs to.

Slowly but surely, Jamal’s confidence has improved and she’s now less reliant on other learners from Syria to translate for her. Without that one-to-one dedicated support that Derek offers, she simply wouldn’t be progressing at the speed she is.

Just months after the pilot first began, it is clear to see that tutors, volunteers and learners are working together in a very cohesive way. Everyone agrees that the impact has been hugely positive.

Being part of the ETF research project meant that we analysed everything we did. It helped us to connect more deeply with educational literature, debating, discussing and contesting established research in relation to our own findings.

It was interesting to compare our findings to Visible Learning author John Hattie’s 2015 research into how we learn and what motivates us to do so. Hattie discusses teacher aides as a distraction. He says they are popular among teachers but notes that Blatchford et al (2012) couldn’t find any evidence to support learner progression through aides.

“Those students receiving the most support from teacher aides made less progress than similar pupils who received little or no support from teacher aides,” Hattie states.

However, within this project, we have witnessed how our volunteers make a big difference to learner motivation and progression, perhaps because they work differently from the aides Hattie describes. Importantly, our volunteers are trained and work alongside tutors, and support what is happening in the curriculum.

We also considered Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which suggests that basic human needs must be met before a raise in attainment can occur effectively. Most of our pilot learners must be extremely careful with their finances; this is a constant worry to them. Our extracurricular activities - such as a lunch club, where learners help to prepare food, write menus and cost up the price of each meal, practising naturally occurring English and maths skills in a social context - have provided a safe and secure environment where learners can make connections. The extra attention and the practical work on budgeting has helped learners to think about providing their own solutions. This has helped to break down barriers, provide good learning outcomes and improve self-esteem - a positive step in motivation, according to Maslow’s theory.

The impact of the pilot on the initial eight learners involved can be seen clearly. They are all progressing and achieving in English, maths and soft skills. They are working more independently than ever before; they have a true understanding about their own learning styles and are actively aware of how they could enhance their own learning.

The project has also highlighted how valuable volunteers can be. Our team of volunteers at CLS are viewed as part of the wider teaching team: they have management, support, training and CPD like any other staff member. Some are working towards teaching assistant or practitioner roles.

The whole experience has been enlightening for all of us. We now have seven volunteers supporting 70 adult learners in Gravesend through the same programme.

Those adult learners started at a similar place to where Matthew started: full of self-doubt and with little confidence, but eager to learn and eager to better themselves. Already, we are seeing their confidence grow day by day - and it’s our volunteers who put in so much time, effort and care whom we have to thank for that.

Tania Lunney is curriculum leader for business development at Community Learning and Skills at Kent County Council

*Names have been changed to protect the anonymity of learners

This article originally appeared in the 17 July 2020 issue under the headline “How volunteers could change your learners’ lives”