6th July 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
I’d forgotten how much I enjoy assessing new tutors. On Wednesday I did a few assessments, the first I’ve done outside of training assessors in about three months, and it was really good fun. Generally I think the standard has gone up since the assessment system changed. This might be because prospective tutors now pay a small registration and assessment fee, so everyone’s taking their assessment more seriously, but I’ve also noticed a general trend of increasing tutoring standards since we started back in 2004. I think that as our reputation grows, and as more tutors tell their friends about the assessment – how to teach, and what to expect – people have just started to take the way they tutor far more seriously, which is great.
Something else I was doing this week was reading a little more about Google Adwords. This is the way that we find a lot of students who want private tuition, and there’s a lot more to it than just asking to be shown when someone types in the word ‘tutor’. Over the summer I’m going to be tinkering with our ads, changing when they’re shown, and how the ad appears when it is shown. The exciting thing for me is that it’s a bit like an A-level science experiment. I’ve got to make a plan, decide on the method, and produce results to make a conclusion. The hope is that by September it’s working as well as possible, so we can find the perfect students for all of our tutors.