Using a maths tutor for HE?

[professorpoopsnagle]

I have been tutoring maths for just over a year, having had some time to raise my family. Previous to this I was a maths teacher and I also did a spot of private tuition. I'm really enjoying it, but I'm at capacity for the evenings that I'm able to work around my family, so the next step for me would be to increase my work that I could do in school hours. I tutor primary, KS3 and GCSE (3 different exam boards including foundation and higher tier), and one of my children is autistic, so these are the areas with which I have experience of.

As I said I'm looking to increase my hours so I am trying to put a feeler out for what demand they may well be for those of you that HE.

Does anyone here use a tutor for maths, or have done in the past for their HE children? Is it something you would consider if there was one local to you and suitable for your children? Where would you look for such a tutor and what would you be willing to pay? I assume (and maybe wrongly, so please tell me if so!) that I may have more chance finding work for those that want secondary maths, and GCSE if they want their child to enter the exam than say for primary level.

I understand that people HE for many, many different reasons. I feel it's important to say that I tutor for many reasons too, sure, a few of my clients want to increase their exam grade and to some extent the point of tutoring for them is a bit of hot housing. However, the majority of my tutees want extra confidence as well as revisiting and learning concepts; so my tutoring aims to achieve this through short activities and games, ways that are usually different to how maths may be learnt in a classroom environment. Each of my students is unique and it is important that their tutoring is what they want to get from it. If you were to use such a tutor, what would you (or your child) want from it with regards to the reasons you HE?

Many thanks for reading and helping me with the research.

Hi, Professor. I home educate my DS1 (13) as he has SNs and couldn't cope with secondary. I use a Maths tutor because I'm rubbish at Maths myself . I found her through personal recommendation and pay £40 per hour. It hurts whenever we get the invoice, but she is worth every penny. DS1 loves his lessons with her and she gives him confidence in himself.

DS1 is still on KS3. My understanding is that he needs to work on these building blocks before he is ready to tackle GCSEs. His tutor is good at teaching him flexibly, varying the content of lessons and using practical, real-life instruction, as well as computer work and worksheets.

The main thing I want from my son's Math's teacher is flexible, individual teaching that suits him. He struggled at school and now has low confidence, so one of the Maths teacher's aims is to build up his confidence. He also has poor concentration, so she varies the topics in lessons to retain his interest.

She also leaves us homework and explains mathematical concepts to me so that I can teach him, for which I am eternally grateful. After a lifetime of thinking I'm rubbish at Maths, I am finally beginning to understand some of it.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

Thank you Toffee for your reply, that is very helpful. What you describe is what I do for my current tutees, so it sounds like it could be viable. You say you found your tutor through personal recommendation, was that through someone else who also HE? Are there any particular websites that might be good to advertise my services on for HE?

If you're going to do it face to face, you'd need to find out demand in your area which would be tricky because home education support lists tend not to allow advertising/promotion. If you were doing it by Skype or email nationally, you could pay to advertise with home education charities in their newsletters or there is a home education website run by someone called Mike Fortune Wood which takes paid ads (I don't take paid ads on mine)

professor - no, I didn't find the tutor through HE channels. It was a personal recommendation through a neighbour. If I hadn't found her that way I would have looked for someone advertising their services in the local 'what's on' magazine, which always has several local tutors listed.

My local Yahoo home ed site occasionally has an email from a tutor, but it is usually someone who has home educated his/her own children or is otherwise involved in the home ed community, I think.

I came on this forum to ask exactly the same question but about English tutoring so I hope you don't mind if I jump into this thread OP.

I tutor in the evenings at the moment but would like to do it during the day too and am not sure how to find home educators who might be interested. I'm already on a couple of tutoring sites but I haven't had any enquiries about day time tuition...Advertising in local magazines is a good idea. Any other hints or tips from home educating parents about where you'd look if you wanted a tutor?

Ds 10 who is home educated has a private maths tutor and a private English tutor for one hour each per week. I found them through advertisements at our local town library.

That's a really good idea - thanks skinanny.

I am a maths tutor too, with the same time issues of having lots of private pupils in the evening but less work during the day. I think to teach home ed pupils would be very interesting but have not yet managed to find any home edders around here. However, what I do do is to teach pupils who should be in the state system but are not in school because of illness, either physical or mental. This work is always during school hours, so may be of interest to the other tutors on this thread.