Would you pay a young person to tutor your primary child if they had no professional teaching experience or even teaching assistant experience?

[ItsmeLu]

The person is the daughter of someone I know and as a very experienced primary teacher I am now honestly reconsidering if I should begin tutoring in addition to my 4 day a week teaching job or whether parents are not concerned with the tutor having experience of teaching pedagogy and curriculum. She is advertising at £15 per hour. I would charge £25-30 per hour. Thoughts please 😊

No on has ever cared that I am not a teacher (though I only do a-levels).

Not in a million years.

My son’s tutor (for 11+) is a primary teacher with 20 years of tutoring experience.

Lots of uni students do it

I know lots of young unqualified people (mainly current uni students) who tutor. I don't know first hand how good they are, but they seem to get work so I assume they must be ok.

Yes I do, She has a university degree and mainly tutors GCSE and A-levels although my children are younger. Charges £35 per hour.

My 17 year old is thinking of doing this. She has tutored a mentee of mine and she did really well.

To add to my original post, the young person is 17 years old and currently studying A-levels.

I wouldn't need anyone to do it I would do it myself. Why would a primary child need tutoring. I am sure parents are capable.

My daughter tutored GCSE pupils when she was in sixth form. She charged much less than a certified teacher, of course.

Are you also an examiner @ItsmeLu? Because if so, parents will easily pay double what you quoted.

As for whether a primary tutor has to be a teacher, I think it helps if they are school staff (as in a teacher, or a TA). It isn't just covering the basics, it's knowing where in the curriculum the child is, and making sure scope and sequence is being considered.

Are we talking for 11+ or for a primary school child who is struggling with maths for example? 11+ no, help with maths, yes. Although I would just do that myself but can appreciate that some children benefit from help from people other than their parents and some parents just don't have time.

I think having knowledge doesn’t mean you can communicate it in an accessible, engaging way. I used an Italian guy from Preply to teach me Italian but my god he was confusing. I have used tutors for my DD in French and Maths and both were qualified teachers. I might use a student to revise or practice but a student / teenager would not be my preference.

Would depend on the person and what I wanted them to tutor. But no, not generally.

We had a tutor for my son when he was doing GCSE’s, the tutor was a boy who had just finished A-Levels at the local grammar school and honestly he was brilliant. He was young and enthusiastic and had recently sat the exams himself so knew exactly how to explain it. My son really likes him.

Sure. In school the older kids often helped the younger years with reading/writing/maths etc. Of course they weren’t paid. I hired a uni student to help with my sons GCSEs. It’s common enough.

Currently paying a year 12 student to tutor my year 11 in a language. It’s working well - tutor got straight 9s in their GCSEs and is super bright. My year 11 has responded well to it. It’s for a subject my child needs to pass but isnt taking for A level

What is a 17 year old going to actually be doing with a young child? Going through workbooks together, listening to reading, practising times tables?
I guess it might be nice to outsource that as a parent. Not sure if it would be worth £15 an hour to me though.

I used to do it before I graduated school - I was tutoring younger kids in a subject I was very good at and parents were very happy as the grades went up and the kids were more confident in the subject. Guess if you can deliver result doesn’t really matter.

@ClawsandEffect I mark SATs papers and I am currently phonics lead. I’ve also worked a lot with the NCETM to develop maths curriculums for different key stages. I know the national curriculum expectations very well.

I’m really just wondering whether I would get much business as I wouldn’t be willing to drop my rate much.

Not always. I’m very good at some subjects but not at others. It’s the same for many people. Only yesterday a friend was showing me what her daughter was struggling with in math- for me was easy but my friend was stuck and didn’t know how to show her.

I think it's a slow burn. I tutor full-time now and have a waiting list. I've been doing it 5 years. I started out with 3 or 4 students and average about 20-25 students a week now. I get enquiries most weeks. Like you, I won't drop my rate, which does put a lot of parents off. But I'm qualified, experienced, an examiner and my students almost always achieve the grade I predict for them.

Given how hard I found it to find a really good primary tutor, I'd say you will probably be VERY in demand. Particularly if you have SEN experience. It took me 2 years with a lot of trial and error to get someone really good in place for my SEN child.

If you can teach online, it would massively increase your earning capacity, although I know that is harder with younger children (I teach secondary), although I've worked with Y4 students online and it's worked well.

Depends. My kids had two lovely dyslexia tutors who worked through word hornet and word wasp with them (reading programme). They were TA in a high school and amazing with sen and breaking exercises down and making them fun. They really had learned material they were teaching, lots of research around dyslexia. One was sen parent herself so she had inside window into reaching sen kids

I would. Tutoring 1 kid in 1 or 2 subjects is a totally different animal to teaching a class, so no need for them to have teaching qualifications.

A teenager may be a very confident mathematician with high grades themself, but that doesn't mean they are able to teach a primary school child to do maths.

Would you teach punctuation?