27th March 2020 14:48
By Blue Tutors
We wouldn’t say that there is a “typical” student who asks for tuition. It’s unusual that someone is completely failing their course, but other than that our students are fairly well spread between grades, right from someone who is getting the lowest grade to someone who is almost guaranteed the top grade and just wants to consolidate that. It’s actually nice to see that the desire to improve and learn is not determined by current attainment.
Something which does disappoint us is the resources put into helping students the border of what is considered a pass at GCSE. This used to be those students on the C/D grade boundary and is now students on the boundary of a 4/5 (good pass/standard pass). Schools allocate more teacher time or extra lessons to these students for good reason; increasing the number of students achieving these passes looks good in the league tables.
There is a real issue with focussing on one statistic to judge the quality of a school. Apart form the obvious problem that it’s not possible to see all the hard work a school does just from one number, it also leads to mis management of that school’s resources in an attempt to improve that statistic. Many students are neglected because improving them by a single grade does nothing to improve the school’s headline stats.
A common criticism of the tuition industry is that we remove a perceived parity among students. Those who can afford extra tuition get more help. However, we have always argued that education should not been seen as a contest between students which must be fair, and should be looked on as an opportunity to create the most intelligent young adults possible.
Every student in a school should be treated equally. The school is there to provide the same opportunity for everyone, and to dedicate more resources to a student who could make the league tables look better isn’t fair to the student whose grade possible improvement would not effect those same tables.