To pay for a maths Tutor for GCSE's?

[PullingOutHair123]

Ok, so I admit posting here for traffic.

But how the hell do you find a good tutor? The internet is full of companies offering tutoring, or sites full of degree students looking to top up their incomes (fair play to them).

But how on earth do you find a decent tutor, at a reasonable price - whatever that is. Some are nearly £100 per hour - some charge less, but then you find out the lessons are only 30 mins so by the minute they are even more expensive.

How do you KNOW that this person a) knows anything about maths and b) understands the curriculum that your child's school is running? And does distance tutoring really work, or is face to face better?

AIBU - or is this a massive unknown, and potentially very expensive decision?

Ask your network. It’s all about recommendations

Tried asking around - one recommended tutor is full, and another one is way above my budget - nearly £100 per hour. I simply can't afford £400 per month (or £500 on a long month) for the next couple of months.

Think going to have to look at online - but feels so hard to assess and choose where to spend your money. If the tutor is crap, I won't get my money back and (more importantly) I won't get the time back

Go for a tutor with an advanced qualification in the subject, who is familiar with the curriculum that your child is studying - AQA or whatever.

A good tutor is absolutely worth it particularly if a child may not get the required grade in maths or English which is absolutely crucial.

Check if your school are doing supplemental sessions? We were happy to get a maths tutor then a saintly maths teacher did voluntary extra sessions at lunchtime which dd went to. She clicked with this teacher and ended up with a 5 in maths which was great for her (words person 8s and 9s for humanities and languages).

We use a recommended tutor, online only and £40 an hour. Currently every other week from near end of year 8, will up.to weekly in year 11. DD still struggles but has improved so.much. I don't know if she would get a 4 without it so we're happy to.invest in it

I find one through a colleague who has a husband that is a maths teacher and he recommended his colleague.

£30 per hour, I also prior to this out a post in the local Fb group for recommendations. But both turned out to be full.

Online ok for some kids ones who struggle to engage need face to face.

yes recommendations.

a lot depends on your kid - grade 3 to grade 4 is bread and butter and most tutors can do this easily.

grade 8 to grade 9 a different story.

If GCSEs are looming get a proper qualified teacher not a kid doing maths at university. False economy.

Our older dd had a terrifying retired head of maths online. Worth her weight in gold for a solid pass in such a crucial subject.

Good local tutors generally don't advertise, it's all word of mouth.

The best tend to be current or former teachers who are also examiners with the exam board, but this does cost money - my rate is £70 per hour for languages, but Maths and Science do charge more.

We had a maths tutor for my daughter. Located in SE England on the coast in busy city ( so not in a cheap area) .£35 per session for 45 mins in person

Worth his weight in gold as DD went from a 2 to a 5 in yr 11 and got the gcses she needed for college…. Recommended in local secondary fb page used by other parents. This was 2 years ago and i contacted him in the august and he only had 1 space left for the whole academic year …. So mid -end Oct you might have left it a bit late . But local area FB and other parents / whats app groups are where i would suggest

Thank you.

I was wondering a local a-level student - there are quite a few. But think need to invest in someone with teaching qualifications, and a number of you has confirmed that.

We’re looking at the top end (not a 9, but at least a 7) so that also implies a ‘better’ quality of tutor.

Bloody school. They have been awful for this subject.

So listening to what you are all saying, is spend as much as I can afford. Eeekk.

Hi OP,
a good place to start looking is superprof.com. There is a mixture of graduates and qualified and experienced teachers on there, and their profiles will give information about level of experience etc. In my opinion the profile will give away a lot of information about how much the tutor understands about 1-to-1 education.
Most offer the first lesson for free, so you could arrange a trial lesson with a few different tutors to see if they are a good match for your child. "Proper" teachers will completely understand that it is important to get the right match and will usually happily do an hour's free trial with no commitment expected. Expect to pay in the region of £60 per hour for a experienced teacher, though some less experienced ones may be cheaper.

My Dd tutors with spark tutoring- might be worth investigating. Perhaps they offer a trial lesson. I know from DD’s side it’s very flexible.

I’ve contacted 3 tutors on super prof. No one is answering, so assuming they don’t have any places? They were all travelable as well. Need to look further afield I guess and accept online rather than face to face.

Harder than I thought!

And yes, price is way more than I wanted to pay. But if I’m going to do it, then I need to do it I guess.

Thanks for the thoughts! Appreciate it.

Word of mouth. My daughter has one for one hour a week, £33. Qualified teacher in her own converted classroom in the garden. Face to face as online I find a bit crap. Her maths is coming on wonderfully, but most importantly so is her self belief which is having a knock on effect at school too. £33 a week very well spent. She’s fully booked now though, the best time to get one is just before they go into year 10.

I really hope you can find a decent tutor. The other thing you could look at, while you're finding one, is whether your child is confident and fairly speedy at multiplication, number bonds etc. I used to do some tutoring while I was at uni, and I found that often this was tripping kids up. They were able to work it out, but it was an effort, rather than just being automatic. That then meant that every question was more of an effort than it would otherwise have been and it sucked up brain power that could have been being used for thinking about the techniques needed for the question itself, and giving them more time to work out what they wanted to do, and to check their answers.

For me that would be times tables up to 10x10 at a minimum, preferably 12x12. And then making sure that essential they can add any single digit to any other single digit (and take away from) with no hesitation.

Obviously there is loads more to maths than that, and your child may well already be totally fluent in those, but if they're not, then getting fluent would be a really worthwhile thing to do while you look for a tutor. The kids I was tutoring were expected to get pretty decent results but they were being slowed down by this.

Tutors do tend to fill uP As many parents start looking after year 10 mocks. It’s half term nearly so the good ones will have been full since Sept.

online will get you more choice

We have been using a recommendation - from a friend - for maths for a few years, but needed to find a science tutor online. He’s great and reasonably priced too, £30 per hour.

Go to PMT education, there are qualified teachers for all subjects and you can choose by price too.

Our tutor lessons are all online now and we much prefer that to someone coming to our house every week like we had for the 11+ preparation.

I tutor maths to GCSE level, and I find that for the older pupils, online actually can work really well, as we can use an interactive whiteboard on zoom, and they can also share their screen with their homework platform or screen shots of things they’ve found difficult , etc. It works best if they have a pencil or stylus to write on the screen, though.

For young pupils, in person is somewhat better as I can use more manipulatives, play more games, etc., and it’s easier to keep them engaged.

I teach some younger pupils as I came to it originally via experience with SpLD (dyslexia and dyscalculia) rather than classroom teaching. However, I also teach those without any specific difficulties who just might find maths hard, as well as those who are wanting to get the top grades for GCSE or work on maths challenge material.

So depending on the motivation and focus of your child, and what particular struggles they have with maths, you might not find online out of the question, especially if you don’t find anyone within travelling distance. Many tutors who have a lot of pupils will teach from their homes, as it’s impractical to get to and from pupils’ homes with back-to-back timetabling - and when there are only so many after-school hours, that is how it has to be! So you may have to consider going to a tutors’ home as well, if you are looking for one of the popular and busy tutors.

Word of mouth is often the best way to find someone in your area, so it’s worth asking on any local groups you can find. You might have to go on waiting lists for a bit, or take a somewhat less-than-ideal time slot in the meantime.

Please don’t assume that a tutor aiming at getting a student from grade 7 to 8/9 is a better quality of tutor! Teaching a student who already grasps the basics is much easier than teaching a student who struggles with key concepts (so it’s often much trickier to get a student from a grade 3 to a 4 than from a grade 7 to an 8).

Thank you. I don’t think I worded it very well. I do agree.

I used Tutor Hunt, and found a local maths teacher who tutored locally and online. He was very good and not particularly expensive, although that was a few years ago now. He did say my dc was his only f2f pupil, all the rest were online (and in London) because our pricing up in t' NW was competitive compared to London prices.

I also found an English tutor (different year) on the same site, who was absolute gold.

https://www.tutorhunt.com/

We used Telios Tutors (online) for my son recently (GCSE science, got him from 5/5 to 7/7, and ALevel maths, got him from C to A) and also for my daughter years ago (GCSE foundation maths, got her from 3 to 5). £40 a hour/£45 A Level). I can only speak for tutors in those subjects but they were excellent. Good luck!

If you don't have a lot of money to spend, and depending on your desired outcome, I think an A Level student or university student can actually be a good bet. But without recommendations you are relying more on luck. They are not going to have the breadth of experience as qualified teacher will have but they will have recent knowledge of the curriculum, revision techniques and know how they were taught. Experienced tutor or an actual teacher is clearly less of a risk.

I would ask school if they have a scheme using A level students to tutor gcse students.
My dd tutors a girl in y11 who was failing maths, now lining up for a grade 7. School pays dd, everyone happy.