27th April 2018 9:00
By Blue Tutors
After a tutor has taught 4-5 students they begin to realise how different those lessons can be, even with two students studying exactly the same material. When a student is struggling to understand the material, and wants to improve their grade there’s an obvious plan of action; tutors tend to identify weak areas quickly and can begin working to develop the understand the student needs to do well. However, when a student is doing really well it’s difficult to know what to work on, and the tutor can feel a little like a page turner.
It might surprise some people that such high achieving students even ask for a tutor, but it’s very common. Sometimes it’s because the student has simply always had a tutor and has always done well at school, and therefore they don’t want to change a formula which has always worked. In general parents want to avoid complacency and a tutor is seen as a way to consolidate that top grade. Also, if a student is planning to continue studying the subject is question at a higher level then it’s a way to get a head start before then.
From a tutor’s point of view there is no point simply testing the student repeatedly with questions they find easy. Of course, developing consistency of answers and avoiding silly mistakes is important, but the tutor is there to do more than that, it’s about developing understanding.
If the tutor thinks that the student is ready, then it’s a really good idea to begin teaching material which the student will study next year for a couple of reasons. Most obviously it gives the student a head start and will increase their chances of doing well at a higher level. However, the more interesting reason is that studying more advanced material makes everything else seem much easier. Everyone from Oxford and Cambridge will tell you that those universities set the bar so high and it’s really difficult to reach that level, but in striving for that level we achieve so much more than if we had aimed lower.