19th April 2019 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The Easter holiday is an important time for GCSE and A Level students in the UK. Many students will have study leave before their exams, but Easter is a 2-3 week period where they can begin to plan their revision and work out on which subjects they need to focus most.
Typically we receive lots of requests for intensive tuition over the Easter holidays, which can work well, but it’s important to consider the balance between time spent with your tutor and time spent studying by yourself. This isn’t something students have to think about during the rest of the academic year when the most common request is one hour of tuition a week.
Some students ask for as much as 3-4 hours a day of tutoring during the Easter holidays which requires a lot of concentration. Compared to simply studying for the same amount of time, students need more breaks and more down time when they are being tutored. It is unreasonable to expect someone to have 3 hours of tuition and also study for 6-7 hours on the same day. Some students can do this, but many cannot.
We worry sometimes that parents see intensive tuition as a way to require students to study, which isn’t the point at all. As mentioned above, some students will be able work by themselves after a lot of tutoring, but for those who can’t, it’s much better to reduce the amount of time spent with a tutor, and ask the tutor to help and structure the student’s study plan for the rest of the day, and continue this throughout Easter.