Is there a market for 1-2 day revision schools focusing on English?

[fivecandles]

Am an English teacher but thinking about organising these independently and charging across an LEA for example focusing on GCSE esp D/C borderline but possibly looking at B/A borderline too. Am experienced + experience as examiner etc. Do you think there would be any interest? If I organised a venue would there be insurance implications etc? Obviously am CRB checked and everything. What sort of cost do you think I could demand. Thought about £30 for a day with a max of 10-15 students.

I think these days are very useful as schools do them. I certainly run a revision day during the Easter holidays and at half-term.

I don't know the answers to your specific questions, but I think you are going to be up against competition from the schools themselves.

Unless you are targeting just one school, you will have to narrow down your criteria to a specific awarding body and range of texts.

My school (as most do) organises revision sessions for students during holidays and also after school.

Personally I think our C/D borderline students would find a whole day just on English very hard to digest and also very unattractive. We're not in an area where anyone pays for extra tuition anyway, so there would be no market here.

I guess it depends on where you are.

I suppose the bottom line is you need to find a school that's not doing very well for its students. Because most schools will fight tooth and nail to get their C/D borderline students over the benchmark.

I think I was thinking about particularly targeting parents who are concerned about their children not getting their C (and having to resit) and promoting my experience as an examiner and as a teacher primarily of A Level and GCSE English resit in a year. Even if I got 10-15 students it would be worth it financially for me and for them to in my view. I have a huge amount of experience and success in getting kids through their GCSE English. The day or days itself would be a mixture of fun quiz and group activities, teacher led information on exam technique and short bursts of exam type questions with feedback. My experience is that oddly students and their parents value tuition more when they pay for it and its outside the normal school environment. I even have students asking me to tutor them privately when they can and do have one-to-one support for free. But very interested in your views about whether this venture would be successful. So thanks to people who've responded.

Schools tend to organise revision days themselves though, with their own teaches who know their pupils, so the only way this would work is if there were perhaps staffing issues within the department which meant pupils weren't getting all of the specialist input they should get, or if the school wanted to run Saturday or holiday classes but their own teachers idn't want to do it.

This way though, your deal would be with the school rather than with parents and you wouldn't get anywhere near 30 pounds a head. Also, they would more than likely expect you to work with up to 30 pupils. Teachers doing this as extra-curricular paid work get around 22 pounds an hour iirc.

I did a revision class for my school in the Easter hols. I had twenty pupils for four hours, with a break in the middle. Longer than that would have been too long, even though we were doing lots of interactive activities.

Apologies for typos: I desperately need a new keyboard as I keep not hitting the keys hard enough for them to register!

Hmm, I do appreciate what you're saying and obviously I know schools make their own arrangments but students DO use private tutors and not always the ones you'd expect. Also there are organisations which do this on a much bigger scale and charge loads more. Plus students pay to go on revision days with examiners etc. But also, as I say, there can be advantages with someone fresh working with students in a new environent and student mixing with others from different schools.

Here for example www.justincraig.ac.uk/

I just don't get this, I must admit. IF you're a teacher, how will you have time to do this? It's the kind of thing people will only want, if they want it, at a particular time of year. And that's exactly the time of year that the English teachers I know are all busy doing everything they possibly can to help their own students.

If you think you can make a success of it, then go for it! I don't think you really know what the market is until you try it out. Even if you solicited opinions locally, a lot of people will say they are interested but this wouldn't necessarily convert into real students.

I think your issues are

1. marketing - how would you do this? Advertising in local papers? I don't think you would get very much business via schools.

2. knowing what to teach - your students will have different backgrounds if they have come from a variety of schools. You need to be in the know about what their schools teach, the various examination specifications, etc.

3. Your unique selling point - it seems to be that you have a better knowledge than the existing teachers of teaching examination technique and know what the awarding bodies are looking for. I expect you have been or will go on training courses for the new specifications, and are perhaps a current examinaer. BTW, in our school, about half the teachers are current examiners - it is encouraged as professional development.

4. Timings - when would you run these courses - would they be all year round or just a certain time before the examinations? If it is just for a couple of days a year, can you justify the marketing and training to pull it off?

I think there is probably a market for this kind of thing but the devil is in the detail.

Thanks, science, for your practical suggestions.

Don't really understand your negativity, Roisin. Time and timing is really not a problem. The obvious time would be the Easter holidays when I too have two weeks of holiday time, students have time and they're not far from exams. I'm only talking about 1 - 2 days. Of course, there would be prep time and admin time too but the resourcing and teaching of GCSE English is my bread and butter.

Lots of teachers do private tuition (and/or examining) on top of their normal jobs for the experience and to make a bit of extra money. Really this is just an extension of that only more focused and intense and with a group of students instead of 1-1. In my view there are advantages to this for me (financially and in terms of scope for group work etc) and them in that they can share their motivation and ideas etc.

I know there is a market locally because students do use private tutors and ask me about them but as I say I'll be targeting PARENTS. Obviously if I find noone's interested I won't do it but I only need a handful of students to make it worthwhile.

I do have an expertise which is not available to all English teachers in schools in that I teach English GCSE in 9 months to 1 -2 classes per year and our A-C rate is at least double that of most of our local schools. But I also have experience as an examiner and as a writer of eductional resources. I have already produced a huge amount of online, interactive resources which are geared up for this.

In a lot of local schools the students who are keen to work hard are disrupted by poor behaviour, supply teaching, lots of time waiting for kids to get their coursework done etc, etc so for students the advantage is that they're out of this environment somewhere fresh with a fresh teacher who they will see (rightly) as an authority and an expert. It's no slur on their normal teachers to say that I'm likely to get the best out of these students in these circumstances.

That will be my USP. Focused but fun revision with an expert in a fresh environment.

Clearly the people who opt to pay for a revision day are going to be more motivated and more likely to benefit from this sort of intense and focused tuition.

I can see why schools may not want to distribute leaflets etc if they do their own revision sessions but if they don't and even where they do I really can't see why teachers would object to encouraging students to do extra revision!

Agree, science, about the specs. Again, I know that most local schools do AQA A. I'd focus probably specifically on English rather than English Lit which means there's no range of texts. The only option is Cluster 1 or Cluster 2 of the poetry from other cultures in the anthology and it's perfectly easy to teach generic skills and then split students into groups to deal with the different clusters.

Thanks, again for your ideas and suggesions.

Good luck to you. I'm sure if it means higher pass rates, everyone will be happy

I think you're definitely right to target parents directly, if you can. Though I'm not sure how you will do this.

If you have positive links with the schools already, I would build on those - i.e. find out when they are doing Easter revision sessions and make sure you don't clash.

As far as insurance is concerned, any building/room that you can hire commercially will come with public liability insurance. I don't think you would need anything else.

I don't know what the safeguarding guidelines might be though if you are potentially working in a building with no other adults. Have you asked your union for advice?

Are you currently employed as a teacher in a school Fivecandles? I don't know the logistics of it but may there be issues about you doing extra work in addition to your normal job?

Roisin's point about safeguarding is a good one.

Don't think there's a contractual issue. I work in a college. There's no problem with private tutoring and examining so don't see how this is any different.

I would probably use dp as a ta. He's also a teacher not of English but CRB checked etc so wouldn't be alone. Thanks for all your thoughts.

Hi there, I have a Year 10 and would DEFINITELY be interested in doing this in the summer holidays tho as we don't live in the UK, but are there in August, would this work for you, plse let me know how I can get in touch with you and or leave me your number,

I think general literacy will help for every single exam that needs to be written, thanks

I have written my understanding of the English GSCE on my website doindubai.com you can contact me via the email there plse.

We have commercial tutoring centres in our area that do this all the time, so yes there is a market. They do an hour a day every day of the holidays - which is a pain because it stops you doing other things through the holidays and I think it is too disruptive.

If I was to do it, I would prefer a couple of days. The hourly rate is approx £25-30 per hour, so £30 a day is a good price (IMO)