16th December 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Following on from last week’s article, we were keen to mention the statistics regarding the subjects that are the most popular to be tutored. It’s one of the most interesting things for new tutors to find out, because they’re anxious to know whether their favourite subject is something that they can spend a lot of time tutoring.
Our feeling was always that the subjects that are popular to be chosen as an option by students at school are also those for which we receive the most tuition requests, but is this true?
Rather unsurprisingly, Maths was the most popular subject to be tutored, with more than 1 in 5 (20.2%) of our students requesting help with the subject that traditionally is considered more ‘confusing’ than any other. English was the next most popular – 19.0% of our students asking for help with either the language or literature component, or the two combined.
Together, the three sciences account for 21.7% of the requests we receive. Some of these requests are for ‘science’, but more frequently the student specifies which particular science they require tuition in, and this was where we found a surprising result. The number of requests for Biology and Physics were exactly the same, both being 4.9%, but the number of requests for Chemistry is significantly higher, coming out at 7.1%.
After this we find more essay based subjects like Economics (3.7%), Law (3.3%, though commonly requested at degree level), and History (3.2%). The most popular language to be requested was French at 2.4%, which was twice as popular as the next most popular language, Spanish, at 1.2%.
Obviously English and Maths are compulsory subjects at GCSE, and there are others which are almost always studied, but our feeling is that, before the age of 16, it’s often the case that if a student is struggling with logical ‘sciencey’ subjects then they seek a Maths tutor in the hope that that will help them not just with Maths, but more generally with other subjects too. And the same is true when a student is struggling with arts subjects at GCSE or below, they’re likely to request an English tutor.