30th August 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Thousands of A’ Level students are getting their results and will spend the next few weeks celebrating or getting their heads down and planning re-takes. The build-up to receiving results is nerve-wracking, and students have been worrying with their friends, researching their options in case their results are not what they’d hoped for, and clicking refresh on the UCAS website. However, students are not the only ones who feel nervous about A’ Level results. Many A’ Level students have been working with private tutors in order to help them prepare for exams, and their tutors have also been waiting anxiously to hear the outcome.
It may surprise students to know that their tutors are nervous students’ results; after all, tutors often have quite a few students and just appear and disappear once a week or so. However, one-to-one tuition allows tutors a deeper insight into their students’ academic abilities and problems, in addition to their lives in general. Students share their aspirations and fears and tutors become invested in helping them achieve their goals. It is often the case that a student has hired a tutor to help them overcome a particular academic problem, and it is immensely rewarding for the tutor as well as the student when the student succeeds in doing that. Tutors care a lot, and want their students to succeed.
Of course there is also the fact that the tutoring market is very competitive, and tutors who don’t get good results don’t get hired. Many tutors market themselves on the basis that they have an excellent track record in ‘getting students A and A* grades’. Parents with children who have been working with a tutor will often refuse to provide tutor feedback until the exam results are in, despite the fact that they think the tutor is excellent. This means that the tutor’s livelihood depends in part on their students achieving good results. The pressure on tutors and students to get good results can often detracts from the most important aspect, which is ensuring the student has genuinely understood and grown in a subject, rather than cramming facts into their heads and hoping that, when regurgitated, it will produce an A*. Either way, tutors have good reason to be nervous come results day.