Tutoring in seondary schools

[pchick]

How much tutoring goes on in Secondary schools. Is it to top-up for GCSEs or does it extend all the way down to year 7? how common is it?

Dear Cumber,

How is a tutor superficial by definition in their services? It is one to one teaching that is meant to inspire, take beyond the basic and become personalised for the pupil. Some tutors will be good and some satisfactory like all professions.

However, it is a profession and deserves a professional wage. The tutors I have used have all been retired/early retired teachers who love their subject but find whole class teaching too exhausting after so many years. Our music teacher is amazing, teaches privately to bump up her fairly meagre wage as director of Music in a prep school - delivers quality service.

There was funding from government for 1 to 1 needy pupils because they saw how much progress middle- class kids made with private tuition - this was intended to support those that cannot pay. I think this may now have been cut with austerity or academies with own budgets won't pay for it.

Our system is not fair but when you know what improves potential - in our case for a weakness in one area, you do it if you can afford it. I'm not to be classed as rich but I really value what a good, supported education will offer my DCs. I also support hwk - that is tutoring and privileged support , only I call it mothering!

I'm confused that people keep mentioning music. Are you meaning help to improve on the GCSE course? Or are we demonising instrumental lessons now?

"Cumbernauld, I can maybe answer your question on whether £720 would be money wasted if dc fails to go from A to A*, from my perspective."

OldMotherDismass, with respect, you have to answer the question in the context of the poster's comment:

"We pay £18 for 30mun for our music teacher so prices mentioned for a tutor is quite reasonable IMO and a bargain if my DC goes from a A to A*

The child is already capable of achieving an A and there is no question about getting a better understanding.

And if you look at the poster's subsequent comment:

"I kept an eye on DCs' progress in their music instruments and I sacked the teachers who weren't doing a good job."

So its £720 spent ONLY in the hope of a marginal improvement of an already excellent grade. And in Music.

For me, it is money wasted.

andisa, please answer the 2 questions I asked you:

So would you pay £25 an hour for tuition so that your child would get an A* rather than an A or B without tuition?

Would you pay £25 an hour for a 'professional' maths tutor to teach your child tricks to get an A without understanding the questions?

The answers show what I mean by superficial tuition at an exorbitant rate, referring to comments by some posters.

I am in favour of tuition for those who really need it, in Maths and English, and at reasonable rates for reasonable teaching. Not for tricks just to pass or for a marginal improvement of an anticipated already excellent result.

cumber

q1: yes, I would pay £25 if my child was aiming for a very competitive uni or needed it for their course options. Otherwise, no

q2: Maths tutors cannot teach tricks - it is about learning, how to go about certain questions, technique. Tricks is a word that demeans tutors/teachers

Thirdly, your posts are coming across as anti- teacher/tutor to me - which is all to common in our British society. It is ludicrous to suggest £25 for a 4 yr course) graduate's hourly rate is exhorbitant.

andisa,

"if my child was aiming for a very competitive uni or needed it for their course options. Otherwise, no"

In that case it would not be superficial.

Contrast this with the superficial tuition paid for by another poster:

£36 per hour + costs of travelling to the teacher, in the hope of improving from A to A* in MUSIC. "sacked the teachers who
weren't doing a good job".

"Maths tutors cannot teach tricks"

I have been referring to a maths tutor who said she does that:

"One of th first things I do as a tutor is to establish whether a student wishes to continue with Maths. If they never intend to use it again I will teach the tricks that get an answer without unserstanding."

"Thirdly, your posts are coming across as anti- teacher/tutor to me - which is all to common in our British society."

What is all to common with our "First World' country is:

a. many English and Maths teachers who are useless. This is evidenced by the poor literacy and numeracy in many adults
today;

b. a superficial demand for tuition which leads to exorbitant rates by 'professional' tutors:

"I charge £35 per hour or more - - -

Lots of affluent parents pay for their unmotivated children to to be forced to work/revise -I usually have a number I see
for many hours a week in the run up to the exams for this purpose. They are invariably boys! This probably helps them to
perhaps get a grade higher than they would otherwise, but without self motivation its hard for tuition to make much
difference."

Contrast this with another poster:

"Cumber - DS1's tutor is a final year Uni student who has excellent grades. We were very lucky to find her. She charges £10 per hour."

c. those who need tuition the most are not getting it whereas many who don't really need it are getting it because of their
"affluent parents".

I am in favour of tuition for those who really need it, in Maths and English, and at reasonable rates for reasonable teaching.

I feel you have taken my comments out of all proportion. To teach a c grade student to change the subject of a formula by using a flow diagram is the type of trick I am talking about. Using grid multiplication rather than traditional long multiplication. This is not a skill they will use again. To teach an A grade student the same thing is not necessary as they understand the maths. C grade students are not continuing with maths at a level. Taking a student from a B to A* which I have gone many times takes more than good subject knowledge. You need good exam technique and to understand exactly what the mark scheme requires. Very few degree students have that in depth knowledge. As I said before, many of my students come to me from other tutors who do not have teaching experience. They do thus as they feel their child is not getting what they need. As I said earlier, I charge less per hour than my mobile hairdresser. For each hour of tuition, it takes me typically 2.5 hours. 1 hour to travel and 30 mind to plan. It is rubbish that good tutors don't need to plan. I look carefully at what areas my student needs to improve and decide how best to tackle it. Do they need an active way of learning? Do they need a song or rhyme to help them remember? Will we make a step by step instruction list? Or a Mindmap?

I then have expenses such as petrol, books and printing. I earn £8 per hour. I could earn more cleaning.

@cumber You clearly have issues. The way you keep stressing 'music' as though it's some kind of bizarre subject that people shouldn't be taught. Many many young people have instrumental lessons (that is what that other poster was taking about). Since many state schools offer little or no instrumental tuition, what are people who are musical supposed to do? Forget about music?

Cumber - Are you against tutoring or are you against them being paid what you consider to be an exorbitant hourly rate?

If it is the latter then I pay more than that for a personal trainer. [dammit, just set myself up as a target. Quick. Don't make eye contact :) ]

If it gets a DC onto the highly selective course or Uni they want then it is a small price to pay.

PooShtun - what happens though when they get on that highly selective course or university and once there, without the tutor, they cannot keep up? We see this time and again (highly selective course, competitive university). A very high proportion of students fail in their first year despite being apparent A grade students.

Getting them into university is the start, not the goal - once there they have the opportunity to really begin their future career.

My DCs are too young for this to be a real debate for me but I would rather they get into the Uni/course of their choice and THEN worry about them keeping up :)

A good teacher is good for the kids but a good tutor isn't, according to some posters here. I don't see the difference.

OldMother - Just read a couple of the urecent posts up thread.

friend's DS was being tutored by a University student (I don't know for how much) because he was struggling a bit. after a lot of hard work the DS scored some As, mostly Bs and a couple of Cs in his mocks so his dad thought - problem solved - and the tutor was let go at the end of the 2011 term. Well, he had a set of tests recently and he is down to a few Bs and the rest Cs. Oops.

I'm guessing that the dad will restart the tutoring this Easter. The DS is quite lazy and lacking in self motivation so even if the tutor nurses him through his GCSEs then there is his A Levels.

So, yes I agree that tutoring a weak kid is not doing him any favours but if the DS or his dad decide that Uni is not for him then at least he will have some decent GCSEs/A Levels to go job hunting with.

As for students failing in their first year, in my experience those tend to be the ones that just scrapped in despite only having to satisfy modest grade requirements. I managed a 2ii despite not being a Grade A student so if one is a Grade A student, albeit a turored one, then I would expect them at least to get a Third rather than fail in Year 1

My course is a highly competitive one at a RG university. Entry requirements are three A's with two of these being in science. I have been a lecturer for a long time and have seen a lot of students come and go. It is often not the ones who have just scraped on who fail (and a large number do fail year 1). It is the ones who think they can coast it and expect the same level of support they got at school. In comparison to you being an A grade student who got a 2ii, I scrapped to get on my course, but finished with the highest marks in my year (1st) and a PhD from a prestigious university.

OldMother - I agree with you as long as we are talking about highly competitve schools/universities

A friend's DD is currently studying for a hotel and leisure management degree at a former polytechnic. In years gone by the offer requirement would have been BCC or similar. Her offer requirement was ABB such is the demand for Uni places these days (the recent fee hike will no doubt bring down demand but that is for another thread)

She had to have serious tutoring in order to satisfy the offer. But now that she is in, I think she is predicted a strong 2ii with 2i being a possibility.

I'm not a RS grad so I am just generalisating but I suspect that there would have been more tutorial work and more individual assignments than is found at a second tier institution like her's so the DD would have probably struggled to keep up with her peers there.

My point is that just because a highly tutored grade student may struggle at Oxbridge does not mean she will struggle elsewhere.

I accept that a lot of parents tutor their kids to get them into prestigious institutions but there are many who tutor just so that their kids can get into a university. I don't think that your perspective holds water when it comes to this latter group :)

PooShtun- tbh, I rather suspect your friends DD will fair much better at a post-92 than many highly tutored apparent A-graders fair at the "old"-universities. As I said, I am a lecturer at a RG institution, dp is lecturer at a post-92. The post-92 students generally get much more support and contact time dedicated to them than students at the research intensive universities. Conversely to your impression that the RG universities give much more tutorial work and individual assignments than post-92's they actually give much less. By their very nature, research intensive universities require research to be done and these insitutions attract lots of the best researchers from around the world to be employed as academics. However, these same researchers do not have time to mark lots of assignments from undergrad courses with a couple of hundred students on them and still produce world-leading research. In this respect, the ones that get good degrees from these institutions did so by their ability to be independent in their learning (it is after all called "reading" for a degree and not "being taught a degree") - those who can only achieve high marks with intensive coaching are therefore unlikely to fair well in the research-intensive institutions and would be better placed at post-92's (where they probably wouldn't need tutoring to get the grades needed to get in).

"these same researchers do not have time to mark lots of assignments from undergrad courses with a couple of hundred students on them and still produce world-leading research"

I never thought about it like that. Food for thought.

Dear cumber,

I do not enjoy your posts. I find the tone agressive - hard to tell when it is just an internet forum so I hope I have have misread this - I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

You do not have evidence that literacy and numeracy is poor in this country or that teachers are bad. Ofsted is not reporting bad teaching.

Areas of low literacy and numeracy are linked to deprivation and poverty - it will take money and years of turning around attitudes in education to change this. Many if not Most teachers are dedicated.

Please don't ask me to reply as I really have zero time for ignorant comments like the country is full of bad teachers - we could say that about any profession, social workers dealing with abused children usually get it too. It is immoral.

PooShtun, you can at that comment as much as you like. That is the reality of it. You say yourself, you didn't get your degree from a RG university - I did, plus a PhD and am now an academic at one. The job of an academic is not to hand-hold dc's through their degrees, but to encourage a love of and enthusiasm for the subject. Lectures and workshops are there to provide focus and guidance for students, but ultimately they must be self-motivated because no-one will nag them to get coursework x, y, z in as they did at school. If coursework is not in, it is not marked and the student is awarded zero marks, if coursework is late it will be penalised unless the student has good reason. If a student doesn't turn up for lectures, workshops etc they will not be chased, they will simply increase their probability of failing.

Coaching children into their A or A* grades and then expecting them to have enough self-motivation (suddenly), when they are used to everyone else pushing them and having motivation on their behalf, will not do them any favours in the long run.

Interesting posts. It's fairly clear you can add so much beyond school by encouraging independent study whether on your own steam or with a tutor to help. School teachers can only do so much in a classroom however good they are. They can't put the information in your head for you or give individual attention. I still remember the whole process of learning to do stuff for myself in revision etc. That's what gets you truly ready for Uni, if that's where you're heading. Not a matter of just being able to spout the information, but being able to take your learning into your own hands. Some kids can get there by themselves, others might benefit from a tutor to steer them (good tutors won't be hand-holding). All to the good.

OldMother- You've taken the the wrong way. It was a look of deep thought :)

My redbrick Uni had severe budget cuts so tutorials with lecturers were sparse. Those that survived were led by post grads. I always imagined a RG Uni as being different

Sorry if I was snippy - our tutorials are not usually led by postgrads, they are led by academics, but we have fewer of them that the post-92's I've seen. The expectation of the post-92's is that academics will spend a good deal more time teaching than in the research-intensive universities.

'£36 per hour + costs of travelling to the teacher, in the hope of improving from A to A* in MUSIC. "sacked the teachers who
weren't doing a good job".'

:o @ Cumber.

One poster is talking about the costs built into her/his tuition fee.
Another is talking about music teachers.
Whilst another is talking about A level tutoring.

You appear to be taking these different posts and mashing them together into a single argument which you are determined to argue to death until you run out of people that will seriously engage you. Is this what passes for 'fun' in your part of the world? :o

CumbernauldMathsTutor Thu 29-Mar-12 21:01:41

"I am in favour of tuition for those who really need it, in Maths and English, and at reasonable rates for reasonable teaching."

PooShtun Thu 29-Mar-12 23:27:23

"Cumber - Are you against tutoring or are you against them being paid what you consider to be an exorbitant hourly rate?"

I would have thought my 'answer', which came before the question was clear enough!

"You appear to be taking these different posts and mashing them together into a single argument"

Actually my point is very clear compared to the self-contradictions of the posters I have quoted. If you read ALL the posts of the poster YOU have quoted you will see what I mean.

What does NOT pass for fun for me is that so many school children in this 'First World' country become adults with poor
literacy and numeracy skills because their parents have been priced out of the necessary tuition that would have made a
difference. That is why I am "determined to argue to death".

andisa,

What I said was: "Many English and Maths teachers who are useless."

You changed that to: "I really have zero time for ignorant comments like the country is full of bad teachers"

That is a great distortion. At least you should have the time to read comments properly.

"Areas of low literacy and numeracy are linked to deprivation and poverty"

I have repeatedly said that those who need tuition the most do not get it because "affluent parents" pay exorbitant rates
for superficial tuition, and I have quoted a tutor's post to prove my argument.

So if you find my tone aggressive, it is because I am trying to make a point to reduce the "deprivation and poverty".

"I feel you have taken my comments out of all proportion."

I have quoted EXACTLY what you said. You have been contradicting yourself.

People travel to work at their own expense don't they?

You don't need to buy books every day.

Printing is also not done everyday. Photocopies are quite cheap.

Tutoring Maths does not need the amount of preparation that you claim. You would find out at the very first lesson what the
student's weaknesses are and with the experience you have would instinctly know how to tackle them.

"I earn £8 per hour. I could earn more cleaning."

This is misleading. People do private tuition because they are making good money out of it.

What makes you charge 'only' £25 per hour and not £35 per hour or more like another tutor:

"I charge £35 per hour or more - - -

Lots of affluent parents pay for their unmotivated children to to be forced to work/revise -I usually have a number I see
for many hours a week in the run up to the exams for this purpose. They are invariably boys! This probably helps them to
perhaps get a grade higher than they would otherwise, but without self motivation its hard for tuition to make much
difference."