Tuition centres - staffed by A-level students?

[fabsmum]

Notice a rash of these places opening up around the place. Like this: here

I know a young lady who has just got a job at one. As a 'tutor'. Not only has she not got a degree, but she's just failed (I mean properly failed, not just got low grades) all of her AS levels and is retaking her entire A level course. Hasn't put the tutorial agency off though, and they've been happy to take her on at about £7 an hour.

And I've just seen an ad on Gumtree advertising for tutors for a tutoring agency, with top rate of pay (depending on qualifications and experience) of £10 an hour. Applicants must have A-levels and GCSE's.

AIBU in thinking that most parents would prefer their children to be taught by teachers?

Or is there a market for 'MacTutoring' in the UK now for people who can't afford to pay the going rate for qualified tutors?

I'm a qualified & experienced teacher & examiner, & I charge £20-30 per hour for tutoring.

I'd be quite happy to pay an able A-Level student NMW or a bit above to work with my primary aged dc in a weak subject, actually, but it's not going to be quite the same experience as one-to-one tutoring with a qualified teacher...

Strawberry unless your dd is going to a really really poor school she will learn her phonics and reading at school. All you need to do is 10 mins a night listening to her read. No 4 year old needs a tutor.

Our local one is also in a sainsburys, quite a mixed area, probably more on the poorer side. DH tutors Yr11 pupils in small groups at the school he used to teach (paid for by the school). Often ends up 1-1 or 1-2 due to pupils not wanting to do extra maths , but I think the ones who do turn up benefit. That is the problem with tutoring fabsmum, the ones with parents that care enough to pay for extra help are the ones who should be ok anyway...

How depressing that people think such young children need tutoring ffs.

ravenAK agree about primary school children, but these centres are supposed to be able to tutor up to GCSE level.

Strawberry - can I give you my top tip (as an ex English teacher)?

Make your dd love books. Start regularly reading all the reviews of children's books in the Guardian www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site . Seek out brilliant books to read to her. Read to her every night without fail. For as long as you can and she wants. Be a brilliant reader. Make the books come alive for her. Talk to her about the stories. Don't worry if she's slow to pick up the mechanics of reading - as long as she's making progress you don't need to fret.

If she loves books she'll learn to read!

I thinkl it's ok.Do you think primary school teachers have an A level in all the subjects they teach?

No but primary teachers will have A levels and a degree. Whether you choose to use these centres depends on what you want/expect from them.

Explore advertised at our graduate careers fair, they pay their centre managers about £21,000 - which is pretty low for a graduate salary when there doesn't seem to be room for promotion, so not surprising their tutors get paid comparatively little.

You don't need to have great subject knowledge to teach well at primary level but it's important that you have a good grasp of how children learn. And also why some children learn more easily than others.

I did similar at A level, but I think the crucial point is that I wasn't being paid. If I was paying someone to tutor my child I would expect more than someone just over that level.

fabsmum she does love books, I've read to her every night since she was a baby. At the moment dh is putting her to bed as I'm a bit too tired all the time and he's reading her the bfg as it was his favourite when he was growing up. I think I'm just quite desperate for her to enjoy books as much as we did. Thank you for the tips I will have a look at the guardian site.

I know school will teach her phonics but I love helping her learn.

I think caveat emptor applies here. Though it does annoy me immensely - round where I live there are loads of shonky-as-hell places with names made up to sound as if they just might be posh colleges, but they're actually not. They take in a lot of overseas students who may not be in a position to realize until too late.

My mum tutors, has years of experience in what she does (which is remedial and therefore specific), and has a doctorate in the subject - she still has to justify to people occasionally why she is charging more than someone who dropped the subject at GCSE/A Level! But then she gets the results so it becomes obvious.

Some children need tutoring early on just because they have more to struggle with.

Infant school age children who are struggling with the basic techniques of literacy and numeracy need skilled teaching. Some of these children may have special needs as yet undiagnosed. Really don't like the idea of very young primary school aged children being 'tutored' - it seems all wrong to me.

The best thing for children of this age is having lots of talking and reading time with a parent, and someone to play number games with them, not endless feckin worksheets, which is what these computer based learning programmes basically amount to - with a bit of unskilled supervision.

But lots of tutors are skilled.

Don't lump them all in with the ones the OP describes.

Something else important is that not all parents are able to read to their children or play number games with them - obviously enough, the reason some children need tutoring in the first place is because they have the same difficulties as mum or dad, or because mum and dad aren't literate either.

Actually, I think tutoring by A level students can be very helpful. It's a different thing to tutoring by a teacher.

Tutoring by someone who's failed her ASs, though?

Not sure.

Depends on the tutor of course. But a degree isn't necessary to help a primary age, or younger secondary age student, in addition of course to the actual teaching they get...

"Something else important is that not all parents are able to read to their children or play number games with them - obviously enough, the reason some children need tutoring in the first place is because they have the same difficulties as mum or dad, or because mum and dad aren't literate either."

I suspect that the proportion of children attending these centers who come from households where parents have extremely poor literacy and numeracy skills is very, very low. Because most people who don't have a GCSE to their name are not earning enough to fork out 100 quid a month on tutoring for their children.

"But a degree isn't necessary to help a primary age, or younger secondary age student, in addition of course to the actual teaching they get.."

You have got it SO wrong! Actually teaching primary age children is very challenging intellectually - you are not simply giving them subject knowledge, your are teaching them skills, and how to learn. Not just what to learn. In order to do this effectively you have to have an understanding of theories of learning and not just subject knowledge of maths and English!

And it really bothers me that there will inevitably be children with undiagnosed special needs turning up at these places and being assessed and taught regularly by people with no training in education or child development.

Really, fabs? My mum gets virtually all her tuttees from households where one or other parent has a learning disability and/or poor education.

"But a degree isn't necessary to help a primary age, or younger secondary age student, in addition of course to the actual teaching they get..."

It's just wrong to imply that what's going on in these centers is 'teaching'. It is simply 'support' - just like the support children get from a TA or free in in many libraries which run after school homework clubs staffed by volunteers.

LRD - the vast majority of recipients of tutoring in the UK are the children of graduates and professionals.

Well then LRD - good job your mum is properly qualified and trained in working with children with special needs, as children of parents who have SN are more likely to have SN themselves.