3rd August 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Finally I’m embarking on a week where it looks as though I’ll have some time to do some actual progressive work. As I mentioned last week, I was covering for Harriet until Wednesday, and was then away for a long weekend for a friend’s stag. The upshot is that for the first time in a couple of weeks I’m looking at a few days of real work.
One of the first things I’ve got to do is post loads of the brochures we had printed at the start of the year. This got a reasonable response then, but we only sent out a fraction of those that were printed. I have about 7,000 left, and plan to send them anywhere where you might find someone who wants a tutor – schools, libraries, leisure centres etc.
Also, something interesting happened this week where a student asked us for a Muslim tutor. Now, we often receive requests for a specific gender or age of tutor, and it’s a very difficult subject. The truth is that there can be an argument for a certain type of tutor to be better in a given situation than another, and as long as the tutor requested is genuinely better then it’s not discrimination. For example some parents have said that their child is intimidated by males, and then it seems reasonable to send a female tutor. However, I can’t for the life of me understand how someone’s religious preference could in any way influence their tutoring ability, so for this student we have had to refuse their request. I think it’s about time I put an equal opportunities notice on the website for our students, just to let them know that we don’t condone discrimination of our tutors.