18th January 2019 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Many students request tuition in more than one subject, and we always advertise the position to tutors listing each subject in which the student requires help. This is because, in general, students would rather as few tutors as possible; if help is needed for 4 subjects, the organisation can be really difficult if the student has 4 individual tutors. From our point of view, we try to make a decision about what the best solution is to ensure the best for the student concerned.
If we look at a student who needs A Level maths and English tuition, our approach will be to assume that we’re going to send two tutors, ideally a maths graduate and an English graduate. This is because the only time we would consider sending a single tutor is if that tutor studied both subjects at A Level, and also has a degree or more likely, two degrees, where they took their maths and English skills to a higher level. A tutor like this is very unusual.
The almost opposite situation is when someone wants 11+ English and maths tutoring. We have so many tutors who are experts at tuition for the 11+ or common entrance exams, and if a tutor says they can only teach the verbal reasoning or non-non-verbal reasoning side of the exams then we continue to look for a tutor who can cover both subjects. It would have to be an extreme case; where the student lives in a remote place, or where the parent is very very specific about the type of tutor wanted, limiting their options, for us to opt to send tutor who could only tutor maths or only tutor English.
The most difficult situation is when a student needs a tutor for GCSE maths and GCSE English, or a similar combination like chemistry and history or physics and sociology. Almost all of our tutors have 10+ A*s in their GCSEs and they might feel confident to tutor a subject which isn’t their speciality but is a subject they excelled at in school. Ideally we would like to send two tutors, but this might not be want the student or parent wants. Alternatively the student might want a lesson in each subject every other week, and then it’s more difficult to attract tutors because they prefer consistent weekly lessons. Whereas we never want to compromise on quality because of logistics, we have to consider that a little. Hopefully the minimum level of quality we’re happy with still far exceeds most of the other tutoring options available.