Considering becoming a maths tutor. Would anyone parents out there who are looking for tutor be able to tell me if my credentials would be someone they would be someone they would consider hiring as a tutor?

[Tumtr]

I am not canvassing for work. I am just starting out on this path and thinking about whether it would work. I still need to put together notes etc and study plans to follow.
just wondering if anyone would pass opinion on if I look like someone they would consider hiring. I am aware my qualification is from a while ago.

I have a mechanical engineering degree from 2002.
my own maths qualifications are all A
i have teenage children of my own who I tutor
i am patient working with children, I have volunteered at primary school
i am pvg checked
I am also planning to complete open university course in how to teach maths

TA?

I would. Math tutors are hugely expensive so if you started at a reasonably low rate you will have interest. Start from there. My son is tutoring 3 kids at the moment. Math IB, A level, and GCSE maths. He is in his final school year doing math and FM A levels. He’s a lot cheaper than a ‘qualified’ tutor.

As long as you know the material and can communicate well, then you’ll be fine.

I got into maths tutoring about 6 or 7 years ago. I focussed on teaching A-levels, I volunteered for Action Tutoring (though they only taught up to GCSE). I joined some tutoring sites and began by answering the job requests that came up setting my prices quite low at first -- I also started with very few students because I wanted to make sure that I could prepare thoroughly for their questions. As I gained experience and reviews, I slowly moved up the ranking lists and started to get enquiries and could build from there.

There was, with some exceptions, very little interest in my qualifications or degree. What mattered most was how the first few tutorials went, whether the student felt they benefited from the tutorial. It may be different if you're teaching younger students,but at A level, the parents weren't as involved in the process as I thought they would be.

However, I think the market may be tougher now than it was. The tutoring site I had got most of my students from hiked its rates abruptly a couple of years ago - it takes about 35% of the fee for every lesson now whereas once it took a much more reasonable 20%. Plus chatgpt is getting very good at answering A level maths questions (although it will still bluff its way confidently to wrong answers in certain cases), and I think that's going to make a difference. All my students at the moment I work with directly, without an agency -- but I'm still having to find ways to advertise and attract new students every year.

The main A level boards (Edexcel, AQA, OCR) have a lot of free information - syllabus, past papers, recommended textbooks - a lot of the textbooks can be got second hand for decent price, and I ploughed through a couple of them before I began teaching for real - despite being good at maths, I found I was quite rusty.

That said -- I've really enjoyed the job, being my own boss, being allowed to drop students who annoy me (there have been some - though most have been great). And it's nice to get back to the actual teaching - doing the part of the job that really matters - without all the paperwork, arbitrary rules and checklists that goes on now both at school and university.

Yes I agree with this. I like Maths but since trying to help my kids with theirs I've realized teaching it is very, very different to understanding it myself.

My priority is that they know the curriculum so I would make sure you study the school curriculum for each age and stage. Most of your business is likely to be examination pupils so really study past papers and GCSE and A Level curricula. You need to know what they need to know.

Don’t charge £12 an hour, that’s too low and would put me off. £20 an hour would be a low enough price to start with and make sure people know it’s a special low price for your first pupils. Remember it’s prep time involved too so £12 for a session would be way below minimum wage once you consider your prep time and possibly travelling to pupils.

Do you think maths knowledge/experience has a use by date? I fail to see any issue with the OP having gained a mech eng degree 23 years ago. The maths content of this degree is more advanced than an A level student will ever need.

I would be looking for someone experienced in teaching (not just good at maths) with a thorough knowledge of the curriculum to pay full tutor rates. I might just consider this for a lower rate if it was for an older teen maybe who just needed some assistance with certain maths topics.

I do maths tutoring, I started in about 2015. In my experience, tuition agencies were happy with any degree, and maths and physics are in high demand. Hardly any parents asked about my degree at all. Some asked which school I teach in, so I explained that I don’t teach in a school.

You do need to familiarise yourself with gcse and a-level papers, and do as many past papers as you can yourself. I found that it took quite some practice to get myself up to speed with answering questions. You have to supervise the pupil as they work through tricky questions, be a few steps ahead of them, and anticipate their mistakes. Knowing the mistakes pupils are likely to make takes experience.

You aren’t qualified to tutor. Parents pay top dollar for qualified, experienced teachers, who have years of practice in the classroom. Tutors know their subjects inside out; including all the assessment objectives of the exam boards. Many tutors also have experience as examiners. Tutors are judged by their students’ results. As parents, we expect to see rapid progress, manifested in improved grades and our children’s teachers noticing an improvement. With tutors, you get what you pay for and the best ones in our area know how each of the local schools teach each section of the exam and advise their tutees accordingly, to ensure the kids don’t get confused. Parents and students are very clued up; all the tutors round here only survive if they are excellent.

@Tumtr To be a tutor for GCSE / A Level parents will probably expect you to have Qualified Teacher Status, be an experienced teacher and possibly even be an examiner in the subject you are teaching.

Take a look on Firsttutors.com There are hundreds of experienced and very well qualified (MA & PhD) teachers. You are quite under qualified and have no relevant teaching experience. IF you keep your rates very low (minimum wage or under) you may pick up some work. Or possibly be able to work with younger children. But you'll need to be very up to date with the UK curriculum for numeracy.

It would put me off.

For a child aged 14 and up, I would be looking for a tutor who had current experience in the National Curriculum including whatever the current fashion is for how to do various calculations in their exams, knowledge of the syllabus for the examining board they'd be taking, plus experience in teaching how to answer questions in the way that examiners expect and the ability to mark practice papers fairly accurately.

I know a lot of people who have degrees with heavy maths components, but the ones who are not teachers seem to be awful at explaining it to children even when they want to.
It's as if they have forgotten they ever had to learn the basics.

Thanks for the replies. I think there is no “qualified” it’s not a regulated line of work (could argue it should be , but it’s not)

I have noticed other recent engineering graduates locally who offer maths tutoring. So it’s not that unusual. It’s just a case of my experience not being recent, which I am now researching to see if I can make up any short fall there.

i do appreciate that people want to see previous results from other students. It’s obviously difficult to do that until I have students. Maybe the volunteering would help there

Tutors usually have Qualified Teacher Status. So there is qualified. Tutor / teacher. They're synonyms.

What age group are you thinking of?

Personally I wouldn't. I'm strong in maths and have twice hired maths tutors - one was when I just wanted someone to support a little bit and preferred not to have the fight myself and I hired an Alevel student at a fairly low cost and who my child (at age 10) could look up to a bit without being a 'teacher'. That same child tutors a little bit now - it's basically just working through workbooks and they don't charge much, but it works for primary aged kids because they want to impress the big kid and so work that bit harder (plus they seem to actually enjoy the attention from the big kid rather than viewing it as a chore).

The other was when my 9 year old (not the same kid) seemed to struggling and we couldn't understand why, and we hired an experienced teacher who worked out where the gaps were (it was something too basic for us to have gotten it without experience in teaching).

If I felt we couldn't support with content because it's hard (as opposed to not knowing how to teach something I already understood), I would look to hire a current university student it recent graduate who doesn't need a refresher. I did a very mathematical degree, and have an A at FM Alevel but I'm about the same age as you so I would need to totally refresh my knowledge base to be able to teach the hard stuff, or start from scratch learning how to teach for the easier stuff.

It's not that it's impossible and you may be able to build up a client base, but I wouldn't care about your engineering degree at all - it's either not good enough evidence of your current maths ability or not material to how good you would be as a tutor.

My best maths teacher (for Alevel FM) got a E at Alevel maths. He always said he wasn't that good at maths, but he absolutely knew how to teach it and school maths is all about practice.

Maths skills massively atrophy over time. I would absolutely hire a recent engineering graduate (although probably only if my child was doing Alevel FM and if DH wasn't around). How much of your engineering maths do you actually remember?

Agree I am likely to have forgotten quite a bit. I would work hard beforehand to improve all that. It’s just a matter of whether all the work (which would be a lot of time invested) is worth it or whether it’s not actually viable as a career

Not without recent teaching experience, knowledge of curriculums, exam boards, and current teaching methods. You would also need ability to mark past papers to exam standards.

It ultimately depends on what your alternatives are any why you're looking at this. Even if you charge £20 a session, you will have an equivalent amount of time unpaid (and probably double early on) in planning for the session and developing resources. Then you've got travel to and from the sessions, marketing, billing, and other admin. Plus (unless you develop a client base which is homeschooled) you will be working evenings, weekends and holidays and so it's not great for family life.

You could build it up to a business, but it would be a lot of work and you'd ultimately find your lack of a teaching qualification will hold you back from the really high paying roles.

If your alternative is minimum wage work, you're looking for a weekend sideline, or you're looking for something fairly flexible that isn't physically taxing then it might be a good option. I suspect you'd make more money more quickly as a cleaner though!

Do you know about SEND? Access arrangements? Adaptive teaching? Safeguarding? Different teaching approaches? Requirements of the exam board?
Tutoring is hard, it's not just about your subject knowledge.

I would want someone with knowledge of the curriculum/syllabus and someone with experience of explaining concepts to children.

You wouldn't have the right experience for me but having said that I wouldn't care about that if you were personally recommended. I think word of mouth recommendations are key.

The OP also can’t construct a title post for a thread correctly. That doesn’t give me great hope for attention to detail and accuracy!

No, you don’t have any teaching qualifications or recent experience in the subject

I know a couple of people who do maths tutoring. One has a PhD, the other is a masters student. Both in maths type subjects.

They tutor GCSE and A level students and seem to get plenty of work.

For me I'd want the person to have a degree in something maths-ish, (like what you have) and that they're having a good rapport with young people and can seem passionate and motivational. And familiar with the current curriculum for the course.

Obviously I'd want them to have an enhanced DBS and preferably a couple references.

It's also a bonus if you have teens I guess as you'll have experience with them generally.

I do think it would not be financially a particularly good option. But I felt I would enjoy it and I would like some job satisfaction. Also I like that it is a flexible career where I only work times which suit me. My own children are teens and don’t need me is so much now.

I think I would like to thank everyone for their constructive answers now. I probably won’t come back and keep thread going. As there have been one or two replies that seem to be relishing putting me down and I would rather not feed that any further.