It's Funny How Much has Changed in Tuition in Six years
6th March 2026 13:18
I realise that our articles page has taken a back seat recently, and this has just been because of how busy we've everything is. Writing new articles became overwhelming because we were trying to add multiple articles each week and as a result they were probably too brief and felt like box ticking.
Our new plan is to write articles less frequently but (hopefully) make them more interesting. It will certainly be more interesting for me to spend some time thinking about what I'd like to write, and doing the topic some justice by looking at it in more depth.
One of the reasons we've been busy is that the website has been upgraded and modernised. We've massively reduced the number of pages and made each a scrolling page, which seems to be what everyone wants nowadays! The biggest change, though, has been the tutors' area which, unbelievably, wasn't styled for mobile before. It's kind of embarrassing that we ask our tutors to keep us updated on their students and yet to do anything through the site meant zooming into their screen or squinting.
One of our drives back in 2004 when we started was to ensure that the average parent could easily navigate the site and request a tutor, which they definitely could; the website was great for them and did everything we wanted it to do. However, we have probably been too stubborn about simplicity and forgotten that the average parent in 2026 is very different when it comes to familiarity with technology. A crucial part of our website should be the look and feel for the user so that it represents us. I think we've achieved that now.
There was a time when we used the term "remote tuition" a lot which meant anything which wasn't in person, and we listed work over email, telephone conversations or preparing model answers. The idea of a video call was so rare that we didn't even mention it. Over the last couple of years I realise that I regularly explain to tutors and students that online tuition is 90-95% of what we do, and it's bizarre how much this has changed in the last six years. For those of you familiar with Karl Pilkington, one of my favourite ideas of his is that: if we hadn't invented aeroplanes then we would have evolved to fly by now. He might be a few million years off, but it's definitely true that the hamstring of being stuck indoors for a few months in 2020 has definitely accelerated our ability to learn online.
Anyway, I will definitely post a blog more often in future, but probably every 3-4 months, rather than trying to write something every week as I once did.....I'm not going to look back on those articles now, one week at work isn't always that interesting for me, so there's no way anyone else should be subjected to it.