23rd August 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
It’s fact not often identified by our tutors, and continually lamented by us, that Oxford and Cambridge are not actually very big cities, meaning that our tutor to student ratio is much higher than anywhere else in the UK. From a tutor’s point of view it’s frustrating because there’s so much competition for each student, and from our point of view it’s frustrating because we don’t want our tutors to feel frustrated and unable to tutor as much as they would like to.
Cambridge has a population of around 150,000 and Oxford just over 200,000, which makes them around 1/50 the size of London, but add to that the fact that many of the population will have academic jobs with the universities and so not in need of private tuition, and the number of potential students drops rapidly. Additionally, many of the children of school-age in Oxford and Cambridge will have academic parents who are more inclined to tutor their children themselves before picking up the phone to us.
Obviously we recruit many more tutors in London (200-300) over the summer than we do in Oxford and Cambridge (around 50 in each city), but when you consider that the number of available students in Oxford and Cambridge is probably around 1/100 of those in London the problem quickly becomes clear. We are always keen to take on someone who wants to be a tutor in Oxford or Cambridge, partly because we do still have a lot of students in those places! But also because if/when that tutor decides to move elsewhere, he/she is then likely to be able to tutor a lot more.
The good news for a tutor who is permanently in Oxford or Cambridge, rather than just during term-term, is that he/she is in a much better position because the student can then be tutored all year round, which is generally what parents want. Experience also makes a big difference; as parents can be that much more choosy, having been offered a plethora of excellent potential tutors, they will tend to choose someone who has an excellent track record.
In summary managing tutors’ expectations while they’re in Oxford or Cambridge is a big task for us. We’re very honest about the likelihood of those tutors finding many tutees, but also very enthusiastic about them joining us. The upside of all of this is that any student coming to us who lives in Oxford or Cambridge is guaranteed to have a phenomenal tutor.