19th August 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
One of the most difficult challenges for a tutor is striking the balance between doing what the tutor thinks is best, and still meeting the demands of the student, or in most cases, the demands of the student’s parents. Generally the end goals of everyone will be the same, but the opinion of the best way to achieve those goals will almost inevitably differ between tutor, student and parent.
Most tutors will say that the best parents are those who are involved as much as possible, but realise where their involvement should end. Most parents don’t concern themselves with method of teaching, or lesson content, but speak to their son or daughter after the lesson to find out what was helpful and what wasn’t, so that they can decide how effective the tuition is. Also, many parents want to speak at length to the tutor, either after each lesson, or at regular intervals, like once a month. Obviously the ultimate way of judging how well a tutor is helping a school student to progress is by looking at exam results, and speaking to the student’s teachers.
The indictors mentioned above are all ways that a parent can monitor private tuition, and the vast majority of tutors would welcome parents behaving in this way. However, it might surprise you to learn that some parents are not so thoughtful and humble in their quest to ensure that a tutor is offering value for money.
There was an occasion of tutor in London who arrived at a student’s home to tutor A-level Economics; a perfectly normal situation, and one our tutors deal with regularly. However, the way the lesson progressed was anything but run-of-the-mill. The student’s parent sat behind her daughter and the tutor for the entire lesson, and continually interrupted. She gave advice on what the tutor should be teaching, how the tutor should be teaching it, and even (incorrectly) corrected the tutor. Obviously the tutor chose not to return to that student, and the parent did request another tutor, but each tutor complained about the same thing – that the mother was overbearing, and was trying to do the job that she was paying the tutor for.
Now, at Blue Tutors we want parents to be involved in their son or daughter’s private tuition. We know of tutors (not those who work for Blue Tutors), who can’t teach effectively, and it would scare us to think that parents weren’t monitoring that situation, and that they weren’t aware of how effective their child’s tutoring was. However, parents have to focus on the areas where they can help, and not try to make sure that the tutor can teach – that’s our job!