Private Tutoring and Your Child

Many parents are now having their children tutored privately at home after school hours as a means to ensure examination success or a better understanding of a particular subject. Indeed many parents consider the idea of private tutoring something that their child would only gain advantage from if they were studying an artistic subject such as music or dance; this again is a common misconception.

Subjects Available

Private tutoring is now something that spans most of the subjects on the National Curriculum and picking up your local telephone directory will show a plethora of names of private tutors who are more than prepared to come to your home and tutor your child in all manner of subjects ranging from English and other subjects on the syllabus through to music, drama, painting etc.

It is important to remember that all private tutors are up to speed – or should be up to speed – with the National Curriculum as it stands today and most of them come with some accreditation that they are qualified sufficiently to tutor your child privately.

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Affordability

Private tutoring does not have the stigma attached to it that it once did. As we have already discussed, it was something that originally was seen by many as a noticeable divide among the classes; the more financially secure families being able to offer their children private tutoring whilst the working classes were simply not in a position to offer this facility.

Many tutors now operating are either former teachers or indeed full-time employed teachers acting in their own time and charging a nominal fee to spend anything from one to three hours at a time with your child in order to help with their learning of a particular subject or indeed help them achieve the success in an examination which they may feel they would struggle with. For the most part this can be with the simplest of things such as working out a timetable of study and how to go about studying and revising.

Your situation may be slightly different. ask a question below ↓ and our editorial team will reply with our advice.

Choosing a Tutor

From your child’s point of view it is important that the tutor you have chosen is someone to whom they can relate and feel at ease with. After all, having a stranger come into your home and try to teach your child a particular subject is daunting enough on its own so first introductions and references are important.

It’s a good idea to have an informal session to begin with, perhaps at the tutor’s home in your presence so that you can gauge both the reaction of your child to the tutor and vice versa. You should be able to pick up early on if your child will benefit from tutoring at home and indeed whether or not they will gain sufficient knowledge from the individual teaching them.

Again it is worth remembering that the amount of money you should spend on tutoring does not have to be huge. There are tutors operating who offer very reasonable rates and can offer discounted rates for a block of sessions should you feel it necessary for this to be the case.

Your Local Education Authority – who although unable to offer financial assistance in this area – can offer you help and guidance and will have a list of tutors which they can pass on to you so that you at least have a good place to start.

The Next Step

Now that you have read through the advice above, you might want to put it into practice. Our School Application Strategist lets you tell us your circumstances and we will map out a realistic school application strategy that maximises your chance of getting your preferred school. Try it now →