7th June 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The rise in demand for private tuition in the UK has made it one of the country’s fastest expanding industries. As the number of parents looking to hire private tutors for their children increases, so do the number of people setting themselves up as private tutors. There are tens of thousands of private tutors registered with agencies in London alone, but unlike school teachers, many tutors do not have any formal teaching qualifications. This being the case, how can parents ensure that tutors are reliable, and able to do the job for which they have put themselves forward?
Anyone can register with an agency as a tutor, or go it alone, without being required to submit to any of the checks that schools might carry out. As the demand rises and parents have shown themselves willing to pay hefty fees, there has been a rise in so-called ‘cowboy tutors’, who claim that they can guarantee top grades and pressurise parents into signing up for a course of tuition upfront. In one case recently reported in the national press, a private tutor would promise anxious parents that their child was guaranteed top marks, and take the parents’ card details to pay for the lessons. Parents later discovered that the tutor had taken payments for lessons never provided.
So what can parents do to ensure that they find a trustworthy tutor in a market which is currently relatively unregulated? One way to achieve this is to ask someone already known to them. Some school teachers offer private tuition outside of school hours and are happy to provide extra help to their students. In other cases, parents may take recommendations from friends and other families who have used private tutors in the past. If parents are not able to hire tutors on the recommendation of friends or acquaintances, then obtaining references from a tutor found online is essential. Most importantly, parents should meet a tutor before agreeing to lessons – if they don’t feel comfortable, then it’s time to look somewhere else.