“Shadow Schooling” or Why Hire a Private Tutor?

Monday May 29th, 2017

This week the first of this season’s Queen’s Summer Garden Parties took place at Buckingham Palace attended by other members of Royal family and 3,000 guest. Which means the summer is officially here in the UK. Just need to wait for the weather to catch up.

Summer half term and the May bank holiday are in a week’s time. They will provide the needed break in the intense exams period for the school children and their parents and also another opportunity to hit that revision again for those who are facing their end of year exams and continue with their GCSE and A-Level exams in June.
International Baccalaureate (IB) students in their last year of study can now heave a sigh of relief as their exams are finished this week and they can now celebrate and wait for the results that will come out on the 6 July.

Those parents with children doing A-levels this year, remember to clear the date of 17th of August when the results are out and universities will be confirming their offers of places!

Whether you already use private tutors for your kids or just considering the matter, the following might be of interest to you.

Recent research into tutoring industry called “Shadow Schooling” from Sutton Trust Fund showed that across England and Wales around 25%, or one in every four pupils, aged 11-16 in a state school received some private tutoring at some point.

The figure rises to 42% in London. Remarkably, but not surprisingly, pupils in private schools are tutored privately double as much as those in the state school, bringing it to more than 80% . The figures are growing every year. Tutoring industry is booming as competition for places at the best schools and universities is getting tougher.

Why spend money on a private tutor if you are already paying a hefty private school fee?

Although many good schools will offer a one to one sessions with the pupils who require help in academic subjects through so called “clinics”, those sessions aren’t that long and sometimes can still be shared with other pupils. And what if you don’t even get on with the teacher who runs your set?

The role of the private tutor is very different from that of a teacher at school. So what are the reasons for getting a private tutor?

Suitability. For starters, the pupil, or his/her parents, can decide who his/her tutor will be. If you don’t get on with one tutor, you are free to try another, unlike with the teachers at school that you are kind of stuck with, whether you like them or not.

Inspiration. The tutor’s role is to inspire the love for the subject in a pupil, as well as to help understand it. We rarely use school teachers as tutors. The teachers might know the facts and the school curriculum, but they are often restricted to the curriculum and aren’t always that good at opening up and discovering new and different dimensions in a subject. We often use tutors who are young graduates of top universities who live and breathe the subject and can help a pupil more than a school teacher. Also because they had been that pupil themselves very recently, they remember what if feels like to be in the pupil’s position and how they arrived at loving the subject they went on to study.

Tailored approach. Even if the pupil is in a school with small class sizes, there are still at least 15 other pupils in the class going through the school program at an average class speed and spending an average amount of time on each topic. With the tutor he might race through some topics that are easier for him and spend more time on those that aren’t his forte. A good tutor can find the individual ‘buttons to press’ in a pupil that trigger understanding of the whole topic much easier. That would not be possible in a class of 16 or 28 pupils.

According to the study, private tuition market is worth between £1-2 billion per year in England, Wales and Scotland.

It is not the case that every child needs a tutor, and certainly I wouldn’t encourage getting a tutor just for the sake of it. However, a tutor can make the whole difference for a child’s attitude to a school subject and finding the right tutor is the key.

At Regency Education we provide face to face and online tutors in all subjects. Our tutors help with preparation for the school entry tests as well as for the school exams ranging from end-of-year-exams, to GCSEs and to A-Level or IB.