Kip McGrath experiences?

[whendidyoulast]

Any good? Cost? Thinking of it for Year 5 dc who could do with extra practice in maths.

I haven't any actual experience, but it is something that we considered 18 months ago for our son who was year 3. I spoke at length to the kip McGrath tutor about what was best for my son and she didn't try to give me any hard sell, she just helped me decide if she was the right option or not (we decided to go for private schooling in the end, rather than kip McGrath supporting a state education).
I was very impressed by what kip McGrath offer and it is reassuring that they are actually qualified to teach rather than the explorer learning and kumon options which are not usually qualified and don't offer much for the money that you can't provide yourself.
If we didn't choose to go private then we would have gone for kip McGrath as it does offer good value for money and is more structured than the alternatives.

lurking to see what others say.

i heard of them through a colleague at work whose son transfered from state to independent late in y7 and who had to do extra work for the entrance exam. he highly reccomended them but i don't know the details. i read that it was a franchise so probably worth asking for views about your local centre as it will depend heavily on each principal i suppose. good luck

DS2 did year of Kip in English mid Y5 to mid Y6 and I wanted him to gain sufficient confidence to 'pass' his KS2 tests.

Briefly, he got a '2' at KS1, did Y3 in that school then transferred to another primary where he was routinely tested and got a '3' mid Y4!! The school gave him 10 one to one 1 hour sessions to help him catch up, then we sent him to Kip.

Personally, I think it was money well spent. He was in a group of 4 or 5 DC, all doing different levels of either Eng or Maths; the tutor sets a bit of work, either on their PC or on paper, leaves the DC to get on with it, moves to the next DC, sets or checks their last bit of work, sets another bit, moves on. In this way, you're not 'paying' the tutor for the time it takes for your DC to do the bit of work. There was always homework, either spellings or ordering sentences, or filling in appropriate words into blanks, or writing a short paragraph, all of which was marked and returned. I think it was about £27 for a 1 hour and 20 minute session.

The maths DC seemed to be working through structured worksheets; the tutor identified weaknesses, he seemed to break down the task then set a worksheet of easier examples of that 'weakness' til the DC had mastered it. It appeared to work, but I honestly don't know if that approach would help a DC who just didn't 'get it' at all, whether 1:1 tutoring might have been better.

I'd agree that it'd depend on how good the franchisee was but I was happy with ours.

So much depends on who is running the franchaise. Some kip tutors are very good where as other kip tutors have gone into tutoring because they couldn't hack the classroom as teachers.

I think its good to ask the tutor why they became a kip tutor. The first kip tutor was an overseas teacher who was being paid as an unqualified teacher (with overseas qualifications) and was doing tutoring to top up her pay packet until she got QTS. This tutor was very good. The second tutor we had was useless and I have the feeling that she left the classroom as she she couldn't hack the classroom.

The best way to find a good tutor is personal recommendation.