Why get a personal tutor?

 

All parents want their children to have the best education possible. It increases their life chances and helps them develop skills that will allow them to cope with the challenges that modern life brings. Lifelong learning is one of the buzzwords of recent governments with the need to have a flexible workforce that can deal with the changing demands of modern employment.

 

So what do you do when things aren’t going so well at school? How do you support your child when they are struggling with Science or Mathematics?

 

Your first step would be to approach the school. Arrange a meeting with your child’s teachers and find out what extra support they can offer and this can be enough to get your child back on track. If this does not work, what do you do?

 

First of all you have to remember that the vast majority of schools will bend over backwards to support your child. Unfortunately every teacher has at least 20 other students in their class at any one time. I know that personalised learning is a hot topic in educational circles but how many teachers can give each child their own individual lesson!  This is where it might be an idea to look into getting a home tutor to provide the necessary personalised support your child needs.

 

Many of you may now be thinking 'why should I pay for private tuition?' I pay tax so that I shouldn’t need any form of private education for my children. Clearly I have some sympathy with that sentiment as I also pay a lot of tax. However, lots of people pay thousands of pounds a year so that their children can go to a private school and for that they get smaller classes leading to a more personalised learning experience. A personal tutor offers you a half-way house at a much lower cost.

 

It is important to point out that a good tutor will develop your child’s ability to learn by focusing in on strategies that are most likely to be successful for them. In the long term this can have major benefits. A moderate amount of money spent now will increase your child’s confidence in their own ability to learn new concepts and skills. This will have far wider benefits than just helping them with the subject they are struggling with. They will be able to apply the information about how they learn to other areas they might find difficult in the future. You will be equipping them with the tools they need to become “lifelong learners” and all this at a fraction of the cost of sending them to a private school. A good tutor should aim to make themselves redundant by giving their student skills that mean they won’t need the tutor again in the future.