14th October 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
For the first time in ages I’m going to be tutoring this week. It’s a past student who is in the third year of her economics degree, and she’s decided to take a maths course. It’s mathematical methods, which I found a bit more straightforward when I was studying, compared to other courses at the same time. That, and the fact that it’s part of a non-maths degree means that I hope I’ll be fine with the content, but it has been a while!
Otherwise the mass influx of new students has slowed down now, and we have the more normal steady flow. At their assessment, a lot of tutors ask about when the best time is in terms of numbers of available students, and I always worry that I explain it really badly. The assumption is always that the busiest time is just before a period of exams, and in fact that’s not really the case. I’m going to try and avoid using language like ‘the derivative of tuition requests’ for fear of being called a geek, but essentially the number of tutors requested is very similar each day from mid-August until early June (it’s pretty quiet between June and August). There is an increase in the demand for tuition in September and January, but that’s because we send emails to all of our past students at those times, reminding them to arrange a tutor if they think they need one, or will need one.
There’s a bit of a conflict about when we send the emails to past students; we find that if lessons begin in September or January, rather than in November or April, the student actually has fewer lessons in total, yet the tuition is far more effective.