8th December 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Something which is amusing as it is frustrating is when we read about agencies supplying tutors to the rich and famous around London and the UK. A lot of these agencies charge fees in the £100s per hour, and while we would never criticise the amount of a tutor’s fee if it was a genuine market rate, being in the position to know how effective many of the tutors in London are (some of those charging the high rates were initially Blue Tutors), we’re aware that there are tutors who could offer a better level of tuition, and at a fraction of the price.
The founder of a prominent ‘premium’ tuition agency was recently interviewed in a web article, and asked what made his agency unique. He said that a few years ago there were only 2-3 tuition agencies operating in London, and that they weren’t dynamic. Now, if we ignore the incredible oversight about the number of tuition agencies in the capital, the strangest part of the comment was the ambiguity about a dynamic tuition agency. One that changes address a lot?
The founder of this agency actually applied to be a Blue Tutor before setting up his own agency, so presumably we’re one of the non-dynamic agencies to which he was referring. Obviously it’s not ideal when an ex-tutor of ours branches out on their own, we would much rather they thought ‘I can’t better Blue Tutors, so I’ll keep working for them’, but when someone does go it alone, we usually understand why; they are often a fantastic tutor, with ideas about how to impress parents and students. The trouble is, this founder’s assessment was relatively poor. He was successful, and was added to our books, but only just, and it makes one wonder how many poor tutors out there decide that they should be responsible for some students’ private tuition.
You might be forgiven for thinking that the agency had their tongue in their cheek, when asked what makes their tutors so good. The answer was the tutors’ potential fame later in life, whether as a sportsperson, actor or politician. It should be made clear that we don’t ask anyone to juggle a football or give a reading from Shakespeare at our assessments, we’re more concerned with a tutor’s ability to teach, something not mentioned by the ‘premium’ agency.
Possibly the biggest concern was the mention of a tutor who did a considerable amount of work for us, and was a good tutor, if not fantastic, tutor. She was heralded as a great tutor for this agency because she had appeared in films, and done some screen writing. Only last year this tutor had contacted us asking whether she could pay less than she owed us in return for a favourable review of Blue Tutors in the national press. We haven’t dealt with her since.
So, the big question is, when a tuition agency appears so apathetic towards its teaching standards, and charges extortionate prices for a level of tuition which would cost significantly less elsewhere, how does it survive in a competitive market? It’s not an easy question to answer, but with the information that many of these rich and famous families request a tutor for up to 8 hours a day, although not expecting them to teach for nearly that long, a cynic might argue that it’s just a way of paying for a role model/carer/older friend. We would just like tutor to be on that list too.