15th September 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
There is a dark cloud which hangs over the whole of the tuition industry, and that is a lack of regulation. It’s rare to find such a popular service today which doesn’t have any kind of restriction on who can provide that service. Obviously teachers must have completed a recognised teaching qualification, but almost any profession has standards that must be met; plumbers, electricians, you wouldn’t let these people into your house unless they were qualified to do the job.
So why has private tuition been left hampered (or unhampered?) by a lack of regulation? Could it be that we consider it to be an easier job? Certainly it’s something that many parents care a great deal about, the figures on the number of students who use a tutor tell us that. If anything tutors provide a more personal, and more influential service than teachers, so theoretically parents should want private tuition to be even more regulated than teaching at schools.
The answer might become clear when we look at the demographic of tutors in the UK. Many of them are from Oxbridge, and parents tend to trust those tutors to do a better job than someone from a less respected university who has a teaching qualification. For those Oxbridge qualified tutors who spend a lot of time tutoring, there is no push to get a teaching qualification when they can get as much tutoring work as they want.
So, is this a problem? Maybe we want to allow our top academics easy access to begin tutoring, especially when the salary and training period puts so many of them off a permanent job in teaching. Well the problem comes because there is no regulation; there is never anyone to tell a tutor, parent or student whether the tuition taking place is actually effective. Given the appearance of effectiveness (friendly, well presented, English accent and skill at the subject) tutors can convince parents and students that the lessons are very helpful, even when they’re not.
Blue Tutors is looking to develop our assessment so that we can begin some form of regulation. The ultimate goal is for parents to begin asking whether their new tutor has our tutoring qualification or not.