27th January 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
It might seem strange that Private Tuition isn’t regulated in the UK. Despite education being a publically funded industry, and other professions such as security or medicine having very strict guidelines (renegade policemen and back-alley surgeons are illegal), there are no such constraints on someone who wants to teach independently and with no teaching training.
We recently reported on a news story from the UAE where they have banned any tutoring which isn’t inside schools, and where the tutor isn’t registered with the proper authorities. This may provide a clue as to why the industry isn’t better regulated in the UK, because the black and white nature of the law in the UAE means that no-one can help a child to any extent, which is unfair and impractical, and would lead to many tutors simply tutoring illegally if a similar law were to be imposed here.
The regulation doesn’t have to be as harsh as in the UAE though. A first step towards monitoring such an important area as private tuition, would be to have a registered list of tutors in the UK. This would allow parents to be sure of who their tutor is, and what background they have. Currently anyone can advertise independently, and begin tutoring a student with no formal qualifications, no experience, and no teacher training.
We need to guard against strict regulations such as only allowing qualified school teachers to tutor students privately. There are not enough teachers to meet the demand for tutoring lessons in the UK, and such a prohibitive system would lead to teachers being able to demand 3-4 times the current average lesson fee, which in turn would mean that tuition would be reserved for the affluent elite, whereas at the moment it is something available to the majority of families in the UK. Moreover, teachers in general show no improved ability to teach in a one-to-one situation than many non-qualified private tutors.
At Blue Tutors we believe that an inevitable way forward is to have an effective, affordable way for tutors to demonstrate their teaching ability. A year’s course to become a tutor is too long, and would lead to far fewer people working as tutors, which would be a shame for all those students who are currently helped so much by excellent dedicated tutors who aren’t schoolteachers.