How do you find a good tutor?

[wonderstuff]

My son is in year 7. We suspect that he has adhd and dyslexia (family history of both) and he is summer born - one or two of those issues would be fine, neither the adhd symptoms or dyslexia issues are huge but the combination means he finds school quite challenging.

In year 5 we found an English tutor who was absolutely amazing and massively improved his confidence - she was a friend who happened to be doing some online tutoring work.

His maths is weak and I would really like to get a tutor to help him for a few months - I fear he feels he has little confidence in himself - but I don't know where to start - how do you know? His last tutor used Tutorful website and I've looked on there and found it a bit overwhelming - so many people and I've no idea what to look for. We had such a great experience before but sadly I don't have any friends who happen to be maths tutors!

Think really hard about what you want:

• trained teacher (or not?)
• SEN experienced (or not?)
• what kind of character (gentle, firm etc)

What's your 'end point'? Catching up? Being confident? All the way to GCSEs?

Online or face to face? If face to face will you travel to them, if so what distance?

Online worked well for us last time - pre-pandemic it meant that a great person that wasn't local to us could still work with him, now it seems like a logical thing to do. Athough having said that I'm open to face to face.

I think great teaching works for SEN and non-SEN so I'm not terribly bothered about SEN training.

I want someone who will engage him - dynamic I guess.

End point at the moment is catch up - he is in quite an academic school and is in bottom set for maths - I'd like him to be able to move to middle set and be on track for 4-6 maths grade - he got 100 in his quant. CAT test so seems reasonable that he would be an average maths student?

Where do I start getting all that? I presume the person I want is going to be in demand!

Has he looked at all the free maths tutorials online?
Also Amazon sell GCSE Maths Revision books online which are very helpful.

We got DD's 2 tutors via TutorHunt. Though they changed their payment system so you may want to find one, then find a way of contacting and arranging externally .

Any tutor should let you do a trial session before any longer term commitment.

Could also try local facebook?

I do maths tutoring ( not online) as do two of my ex-colleagues. We get lots of referrals from the school we taught at; parents will often ask the current teachers if they know of anyone and seem to like that we have taught there and know the system at the school. Maybe you could ask his teacher or the head of department.
Also try facebook; if you have a local group you could ask for recommendations.

I'm also looking for a tutor - had one and she let us down.. just didn't turn up one week Abd said she was too busy!!! Not happy!!

Ask the school - email head of maths. They may know of a retired or ex teacher or colleague from another school who does tutoring. This is how most of my students come to me (I'm a teacher but on a career break)

Word of mouth. Some agencies were charging £65 an hour! I found a lovely tutor for £30 who is great.

Someone to try, OP - have heard good things

www.facebook.com/juliesmathstuitiononline/

Thanks all. I will try your suggestions.

Have you got a local Kip McGrath centre? I used that for my DC many moons ago - lovely and effective tutors, not eyewateringly expensive like some other options.

I'd say qualified Maths teacher is the most imperative thing. I don't rate Kip McGrath at all, my friend who has no maths experience (says she hates it) and who has no teaching experience taught at Kip McGrath for some extra money. They're franchises so they use the name but are run how they see fit.