6th December 2019 14:51
By Blue Tutors
The vast majority of our students request a tutor to help them alongside their work at school; a supplementary tutor, one could call it. However, some students have a tutor who is the sole educator for a particular subject, and while the bulk of the lessons are not dissimilar from the former type of tuition, there is added responsibility.
Tutoring someone who isn’t following a syllabus at school means the tutor has to time manage the lessons and make sure the syllabus is covered in its entirety and in time to allow for revision and past papers. This is in contrast to tutoring a student who is attending school where, in general, the student will arrive at each lesson with a list of things they would like to discuss with their tutor.
Many tutors will try to focus on improving a student’s skills and approach to the subject. Obviously this will often mean looking at specific questions, but using that specific to example to help the student to understand what can be improved more generally, allowing the student to improve quickly at all topics within that qualification. Once in charge of the whole syllabus, the tutor must focus on content too; without ensuring everything has been covered, there is the risk that the student will have to answer a question in an exam about which they know nothing.
An interesting result of being a student’s sole educator is that it makes us a less effective tutor, because we can’t spend the same amount of time making sure that a student understands something fully. This has to be balanced with getting through the syllabus, hoping that there will be time to revisit a topic not fully understood at a later date, or suggesting more lessons. Of course, the tutor is also doing the job a teacher would be doing, so we shouldn’t feel badly about the situation.
It’s not unusual for a tutor to feel apprehensive about taking on the responsibility of being a sole educator. There is more pressure and tutors care about their students and don’t want to let them down. However, with the extra responsibility also comes extra reward when the student does well, and a confident diligent tutor always makes sure they do exactly what the student needs.