I've been recruited by an agency in response to an ad I've placed on a local website. I'm an experienced maths tutor. The agency specialises in coaching 11-16 year old Chinese students for entry to UK public schools. I've just taken my first lesson online and the student hardly spoke English at all. I've seen assessment papers that she's done and generally she did very well but there were a few areas where she needed help, some of them at quite a basic level. The issue I have is that surely regardless of her ability in Maths, her lack of English skills should be a concern. I suppose I'm just looking for people's thoughts on how appropriate the tuition is, bearing in mind that the student could fly through her exams and then be unable to communicate once she's here. The agency are paying a reasonable hourly rate and have booked me to tutor 3 students through the Summer holidays, approx 7 hours a week. Maybe it doesn't matter that she can't communicate in English (she didn't know the word 'multiply') but this situation concerns me.
I'd appreciate people's thoughts on this.