28th November 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
A report on the Independent’s website recently highlighted the trend for ‘super tutors’ in the UK: tutors who can command up to £300 an hour for their services. The article focuses on two tuition agencies who set themselves up to court celebrities and extremely wealthy families.
The companies, Keystone Tutors and Bright Young Things, actively push the credentials of their tutors, making public the awards and aspirations of the tutors on their books. The roles of the tutors include amateur sportspeople, actors, screenwriters, artists and concert musicians, and the students they serve are attracted by the promise of being tutored by a potentially famous Oxbridge graduate.
Approximately 30% of the clients struggling to pay the high fees demanded by the super tutors, and the cost of the tuition is to sacrifice other family expenses. However, many of the other eager families are those for whom the hourly rate is irrelevant, and it is the profile of the tutor which they are much more concerned about. One family requested 8 hours a day from one tutor during half-term, although they didn’t want him to tutor for all of those hours, they simply wanted to ensure that he didn’t tutor anyone else.
Of course, the rewards for the tutors aren’t simply financial. The identities of the students are confidential, but there is obviously a particular attraction for the tutors to teach for people they would otherwise only see in the newspaper. Also, the article tells of tutors flying to Buenos Aries to act as a Spanish speaking guide, and to Paris to show a student around a museum.