Good evening members - today’s post is about an amazing initiative to level the playing field in education by offering private tutoring to the kind of students who would never normally receive it. It was started in Manchester and has just received huge government backing. There’s a lot of gloomy news around at the moment, but we’re committed to bringing you good news too. And the rise of The Tutor Trust is unambiguously good news.

Some readers will know that I take a particular interest in this area and have been mentoring students at the comprehensive school near where my mum lives for the past couple of years. I help them with their university applications and try to give them some of the confidence and support that is commonly offered by private schools, something I wrote about for The Guardian recently if you’re interested.

Soon we are going to start a Mill Mentoring program to help guide a cohort of Greater Manchester sixth formers as they apply to uni. If you know of a school th…