What type of tuition is best for my child?

Face-to-Face Tuition

Face-to-face tuition is the traditional and perhaps the most widely recognised form of tutoring. It involves a teacher providing tuition for your child in person, usually at your home or some neutral setting (e.g., a library or café). About 60% of the requests we receive from parents are for face-to-face tuition, particularly those for children in their younger years or who require support with SEN.

The advantages of face-to-face tuition are:

• Face-to-face tuition allows more personal interaction between your son or daughter and their teacher. The teacher can physically observe your child’s learning process and provide individual guidance. 
• Face-to-face tutoring can provide a more focused environment, as there are fewer distractions. Your son or daughter can concentrate on their studies without getting distracted by social media or other online activities.
• Face-to-face tutoring provides better communication between you, your child, and the tutor. You can sit in on lessons or have a quick chat before and after each session. There are fewer chances of misunderstandings and miscommunications, which can occur online.
• Face-to-face tutoring can be more engaging as a teacher can use different techniques, such as visual aids, to make the learning process more interesting and interactive.
• With face-to-face tuition, it is easier for a teacher to identify learning gaps, as they can observe your child’s performance and provide immediate feedback to them and to you.

The disadvantages of face-to-face tuition are:

• Depending on your location, there may be fewer teachers available for you, so your choice and selection may be more limited. The list of teachers we provide for you is for relevant teachers who live within 15 miles of your home, as it needs to be practical for the teacher to travel to you.
• Tuition fees for face-to-face tuition are about £6 ph more expensive than online tuition, as teachers are required to travel to your home, and this extra fee mitigates their travel costs.

Overall, while online tutoring offers many benefits, such as a wider choice of teachers, flexibility, and convenience, many parents still see face-to-face tuition as offering the personal touch. It enables the teacher to build a closer rapport with your child and, arguably, can support them to achieve better results.

Online Tuition

With the advent of technology, online tuition has gained immense popularity. It allows your child to connect with their teacher remotely, eliminating geographical constraints. This mode of tutoring often involves video calls, shared documents, and other digital tools to facilitate effective learning. Our teachers use a range of platforms for their online lessons, including Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, etc.

The advantages of online tuition are:

• For face-to-face tuition, the teacher must be local to you so they can practically travel to your family home to deliver lessons. The need to be local limits the choice of teacher and their available timeslots. An online teacher can literally be based anywhere in the UK. This means there is much greater availability of more teachers, meaning more chance of finding that perfect teacher, the one who is just the right match for your son or daughter.
• There is no travel involved with online tuition, which reduces the cost of your lessons by about £6 ph. It also means teachers do not arrive late at your house due to travel delays … and is better for the planet! If either you or your teacher are travelling away from home, perhaps on holiday, tuition can still continue if required.
• For teachers travelling, lessons less than one hour long are not usually viable due to the travel time and costs involved, but with online, more frequent shorter lessons can be given, which particularly suits children who tire easily or have short attention spans.
• On a practical domestic level, there is no need for tuition to take place over your kitchen table. Your child can work in familiar surroundings, with no one invading their privacy, which can be less daunting for a nervous child.
• Lessons are still live and interactive; this is not a case of just watching a video. This may be primarily through dialogue and shared screens; there are also impressive virtual classroom and whiteboard apps which enable both teacher and child to write simultaneously using an electronic pen on a shared virtual whiteboard. Other add-ons allow the teacher and your child to edit PDFs together in real time. Also, the sessions (from your child’s perspective) can be recorded and used later, including lesson notes, which may include links, embedded videos, and simulations.
• Today’s children live in an online world, so they are used to using computers and screens for learning. Many schools embrace online tuition as a hybrid of classroom teaching and interactive whiteboards.

The disadvantages of online tuition are:

• Online tuition is less effective for younger children or those with SEN. These children often find it difficult to concentrate and focus through a screen and generally will do much better in a face-to-face arrangement.
• Online tuition heavily relies on technology, and technical problems such as poor internet connectivity, software glitches, or hardware malfunctions can disrupt the learning process.
• Online tuition can lack the personal touch and the immediate feedback that face-to-face interactions provide. Your child may struggle with the absence of a physical presence with self-discipline and motivation when learning in an online environment. It may make it easier for your son or daughter to procrastinate or disengage.
• Certain subjects, such as science, may involve hands-on activities that are challenging to replicate online. Lack of access to labs, workshops, or physical materials can impact the quality of education in these areas.
• Excessive screen time can lead to issues like eye strain, fatigue, and other health-related concerns. Students spending extended hours on digital devices may face physical and mental health challenges.

Small Group Tuition

By teaming up with friends and family members, parents can create their own small groups for tuition, either at home or online. This innovative approach allows children to benefit from the highest-quality teachers and enables parents to share the costs, making quality education more accessible.

Children should be of similar ages, abilities, and ambitions. The group size should be no larger than four. The cost of each lesson is automatically charged equally across the group. Parents can easily manage the size of their group and can start and stop lessons at any time.

The advantages of small group tuition are:

• Within a small group, your child can still receive personal attention if the group is not too large and the range of abilities is not too disparate. Whether adapting the pace of instruction, providing additional practice materials, or offering targeted guidance on challenging topics, the teacher can ensure that every child progresses at their own pace and maximises their potential.
• Small group tuition encourages collaboration and peer learning. Students can share their knowledge, exchange ideas, and support each other's learning. This collaborative environment fosters critical thinking, communication skills, and teamwork ... all valuable attributes that extend beyond schoolwork and exams.
• Group tuition is significantly more cost-effective than one-on-one tuition, as tuition fees can be shared across the group. Small group tuition costs range from £15 to £35 per student per hour, depending on the subject, the tutor's qualifications, and the group size.

The disadvantages of small group tuition are:

• Liaising with your friends or family members to create your group will take some of your time. We provide you with a secure and easy way to invite others to add their payment card to your account, and you can change the size of your group at any time.
• You will also need to agree with your group on lesson times and a venue for the tuition unless you are choosing online tuition.