17th February 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
When a tutor joins us they usually want to know how busy we are; how many students are currently contacting us looking for a tutor. The assumption is generally that we have a peak period, whether it’s at the start of the school year, or just before exams.
Obviously what tutors are keen to find out is how many students they can expect to begin tutoring over the next weeks, and luckily the actual situation is that, other than in July and August, we tend to receive a very consistent number of requests throughout the year. Whereas this appears to be encouraging for tutors, and we not saying it isn’t, it really misses an important statistic about the students who contact us.
The real question that tutors should be asking is when is the best time to take a student on, because that’s really what the tutor wants. A lot of time is often spent arranging the first lesson, and getting to know your new student, but after 5 lessons or so, those concerns are no longer important, and all the administration surrounding lessons just feels easier. However, if the student only wants 3-4 lessons then, from a tutor’s point of view, the arrangements feel much more difficult than with longer term tuition.
What a tutor wants is to begin lessons with a student who wants consistent lessons for a long period of time, and when is the best time for that? Unsurprisingly, late September/early October and late January/early February are the best times. When a student has their first lesson at either of these ‘peak times’ they go on to have more lessons than at any other.
The worst time for a student to have their first lesson is in June. June students, on average, have roughly a quarter of the number of lessons as a student having their first lesson at a ‘peak time’.
The explanation of these statistics is fairly easy: students contacting us in September, October, January and February are often very serious about hiring a private tutor, and want to get the arrangement right. However, in June, students can be panicking about imminent exams, and see a tutor as a quick fix.