28th June 2019 9:00
By Blue Tutors
A slightly strange phenomenon we encounter, particularly at this time of year, is tutors not identifying that the demand for tutoring is determined by students, rather than by tutors. This seems obvious but prospective tutors often assume that they can tell us the hours during the week when they want to tutor, and expect that we will fill those slots with students who need help.
Students don’t see tuition as a homogenous good. The premise of our tutoring model is to find the perfect tutor for a student, and this is something which only becomes clear over a few lessons. If we were to send a different tutor to a student’s home each week then the student would compare each of those tutors and quickly realise that they want the best one for them every week.
We understand that over the summer lots of our tutors are looking to make some money if they’re studying because it’s the only time they have free, but it doesn’t make them a very attractive prospect to a student who wants more than just a couple of months of lessons. We have so many amazing tutors who are keen to work over the summer and beyond that it just doesn’t make sense for us to match a student with a tutor who can’t commit to want the student wants.
Of course, many students do just want summer tuition, often because parents don’t want their children to do nothing academically for the whole summer vacation. And when someone has struggled in the previous academic year, say in their first year of GCSEs or A Levels, using a tutor to get them back up to speed over the summer can work really well. Summer tuition does happen.
A message we emphasise to new tutors is that accepting a student means making a commitment to the student, which includes being available until the end date of tuition. Of course, tutors are encouraged to conditionally accept students and state what they can’t do, but in a situation where a student wants lessons from June for 12 months, there aren’t many positives to matching that student with a tutor who can only fulfil 20% of those lessons.