Wednesday, February 4, 2009

How A Private Tutor Can Help Your Child

By Clarissa Kyriakos

If you do a search on the internet for private tuition you will soon discover that there are many tuition agencies offering private tuition by a wide range of qualified and unqualified tutors. Researchers have reported that there may be more than one in four state school pupils in England having private tuition after school to help them with their studies. A survey of 3,000 primary and secondary school students in England showed 27% of them had private tuition.

Most parents who decide to use private tuition for their children are looking for tutors to support their children's learning in Mathematics and English. This is particularly the case for pupils of primary school age. Private tuition for secondary school pupils may extend to foreign language tuition and the sciences.

It is the approach of Year 6 SAT's (Standard Assessment Tests) which is the driving force that encourages most primary school pupils to seek private tuition. It is the desire to achieve the national average level or better which will help to get them to the desired learning level or setting group in their chosen secondary school. While primary age children have the SAT tests to focus their thoughts, secondary school children are usually looking for help to gain higher grades in their GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) examinations.

To fit around the school day, private tuition is usually held after school and sometimes on Saturday mornings. Lessons are usually taken once or twice a week. Most lessons usually last for an hour but older children may extend the lessons to an hour and a half. Those with poorer concentration and younger children may find that lessons of forty five minute are more appropriate. Some tutors will offer tuition during half-term breaks and through the long summer holidays.

Private tuition is usually carried out individually but sometimes there may be a few children of similar ability who could join together for their tutoring. Charges will reflect the number of students having their tuition together in the same group. One-to-one tuition will be more expensive than private tuition that takes place in groups but this is compensated for by the advantages of fewer distractions and the individual attention that the child receives.

The main reason for taking private tuition is to ensure that areas of uncertainty in the child's education can be identified so that a programme of work can be devised to shore up the foundations and improve learning in the relevant areas.

Assessments will be carried out to see what level the student is currently working at and if there are any significant gaps in their learning that may be causing problems. The private tuition will then focus on these areas. The tutor's goal is to boost their student's self confidence in the subject and to ensure that progress is made.

The main benefit of private tuition is that the student has the attention of the teacher for the full period of the lesson and that concepts, strategies and methods can be highly focussed. This enables misconceptions to be cleared up immediately. These highly focussed private tuition lessons enable significant progress to be made and the children enjoy the close attention of the tutor.

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