What are you paying for 11 plus tuition?

[utterlyfedup2]

Full disclosure, I'm an 11 plus tutor.

I currently offer face to face tuition and travel to students homes but for various reasons, can't continue doing this. I'll be moving online from September and am trying to work out what to charge.

I'm in the home counties in a big grammar area (Kent) and although distance will no longer matter, I suspect I'll still be working with families in my local area. I have 30 years teaching experience and 10 years of excellent 11 plus results.

What do you currently pay for online 11 plus tuition?

WIBU to charge around £45 per hour for 1:1?

Show this thread to anyone who thinks the 11+ is remotely fair.

Opportunities for bright children from poor backgrounds, my arse.

She's a full time teacher in another school (not the one my kids attend).

That is why my preference would always be face to face personally.

Lots of tutors, including me, offer reduced fees or free tuition to those genuinely in need.

I do a group session every week for a local charity who offer completely free 11 plus tuition for bright children from low income families.

I do, however, have bills to pay and 3 young children of my own, so I'm not going to apologise for charging everyone else for tuition!

And this is why we need to abolish grammar schools.

I say that as someone who went to one.

Rich/motivated parents would still buy their way into 'better' schools by buying or renting houses in the right area, even if grammar schools were abolished. This already happens in many areas.

I know - there's not much you can do about that - but there's so much wrong with (a) grammar schools existing and (b) people supporting what makes them so wrong.

I'll fight tooth and nail for abolition. My kids went to a comp.

Yes, I did attempt to call but understandably she did not answer as she was teaching, and yes I did apologise. She doesn't do back to back appointments - she acknowledges it's not possible to provide effective teaching without breaks for drinks, snack etc, to get materials ready for next session, so wouldn't have lost any income, but i respect that is her time and not ours to encroach upon. We pay each half term in advance, whether our daughter is able to attend or not

When patients arrive late, my clinic then runs late and I am then doing unpaid overtime, same as tutor was doing when I arrived 5 mins late. NHS, so not charging, but I am doing work for no pay, which is equally unfair. However, unlike you, I cannot pick and chose my clients. You have complete control, so don't have to put up with any 'rubbish'.

How are you fighting 'tooth and nail' for their abolition? Are you an MP/local councillor with some say?

I am also not a fan of them - the way people mostly need to tutor to get their child in, which defeats the whole object of them in the first place. I also went to a comp after turning down a scholarship to a decent private school, and came out with top possible grades across the board, and would much prefer my girls went to a decent comp. However their catchmented secondary is horrendous for bullying, fighting, sexual assaults, racism, so I am going against my morals and tutoring for the 11+

Fair point. That's unfair you have to keep working unpaid.

I have 5 minutes break between lessons when teaching from home to prep, nip to the loo etc, except for when parents take that time from me by being late. I'm going to be much more proactive about getting rid of or putting online the ones who do it more than once, whatever the reason. That way I might feel slightly more charitable towards the genuine ones.

I think its really easy to tell the ones who are genuine, they come in looking flustered from rushing and apologising, telling their children to hurry up etc, and are usually tolerant when we are running late. Vs the ones who breeze in with a Costa in hand, chatting on their phone but are first to moan if kept waiting.
Life happens, but if plan well, being late should be a rare occurrence.

Completely agree.

Most of my late ones are the 2nd type. Sadly. Their attitude makes it even more irritating!

This is what's so wrong with it - it condemns the plebs to a rotten education in schools that no-one has any incentive to care about.

Grammars create worse outcomes for everyone, even most of the kids who attend them. The one I went to was a competitive, brutal, abusive hellhole.

People want more grammars, but oddly enough they never want more secondary moderns, which is the flip side of the coin.

I live in an 11+ area. We get lots of online tutors targeting us as its an expensive area and they want to access the market without paying the costs of living locally.

Demand is much lower for online as most parents are desperate to reduce screen use in all forms and also know children engage and learn better with face to face. The stakes are high so people aren't willing to compromise.

And, once again, this is everything that's wrong with the state funding schools that are entirely for the benefit of the wealthy.

I've found tutors for £20 per hour who we thought were excellent...

We pay £30 an hour for face to face, but that's a group of four students in the classroom together. £30 a week is a hell of a lot of money for us as a family, but it seemed like a vast majority of DD's classmates had tutoring and I was concerned about her being at a disadvantage. Our tutor is lovely and has a 98% success rate so I like to think pray that we're getting a guaranteed pass...

My friend pays £20 an hour for online sessions, which is a group of 5-6 students at a time. She is hailed as the best online tutor in the area, but her success rate is "around 80%" (her words) which didn't fill me with confidence.

£50-£60 for one-to-one is pretty standard where I am for a really superb tutor (decades of experience, superb results, long waiting list), £40-£50 for most other tutors who are qualified teachers with a good bit of experience, and £30-£40 will get you someone who isn’t qualified with QTS or who did a couple of years of teaching at most. Lots of parents want the service so the tutors dictate their prices, really. Anything less than that is going to be groups or sixth formers running sessions!

My DD had an online tutor for GCSE maths at £25 an hour. She also had an online A-level history tutor for £25 an hour. Both qualified and excellent at support her and doing prep work etc before and after the session.
both were one to one

Also, it may depend on the subject and a child’s age but good tutoring absolutely can be done online when you have a tutor who is competent and engaging. An hour of their time is an hour of their time, so why should it cost less? The only thing that certainly should cost more is travel to their house.

Both kids did 11+. Very experienced tutor who had 100% pass rate the years my two did it (one was just last year). Can’t comment on other years.

We took the kids to her and left them with her. £25 an hour 1:1 and £15 an hour when she did group ‘mock’ tests with them.

I paid £40 face to face last year. I wouldn’t pay that for online, maybe £30. Are you in a grammar school area - I suspect demand has gone up in those areas given the vat issue but if you are tutoring for indie schools demand may well have gone down.

Seeing these amounts it is shocking and will only get worse with vat on private schools etc.

So glad we had the church school in our area as the third option - you have to pay weekly for that from before birth (need baptism certificate) and amount is up to you and have to continue until the November when youngest child is in year 6 and spend an hour a week the whole family being "tutored".

https://www.aimkent.org.uk/