You know your child needs support, but when is the ideal time to get that support?
We get asked this question almost hourly by parents and the truth is all down to how much support your child needs and what their goals are.
So below we have collated the most typical reasons on why you should have a tutor.
GCSE Exam Tutors - our most popular tutors!
Your daughter or son is wanting to improve by 1 grade or consolidate a few minor topics of which they are unsure.
For example, they need support with quadratic graphs in maths
Or elements of the Unseen Poetry for English Literature
Or consolidating their essay writing to achieve top marks.
How we can help:
September or October is the perfect start date for these students (especially if they are beginning Year 11).
Typically, students aim for one session a week, with time off for holidays. Nearer to exams they would be able to do multiple practice papers with their tutor, allowing them to fine tune their techniques for exam season.
What if you need a tutor to help your child jump up 2-3 grades?
A student who wants to improve by 2-3 grades may have several large (but not astronomical) gaps in their knowledge. Gaps might include how to effectively structure an essay style question for Macbeth; or struggling with the fundamentals of algebra.
How we can help:
These students should be aiming to have a tutor start in the May/June time of Year 10.
We recommend 1 session a week, ideally learning through most holidays with additional sessions during the summer such as twice a week.
These students are looking to increase grades by a large amount and therefore need to ensure they are focused and motivated, prioritising a fair amount of independent study outside of classes.
Regular practice papers should be used to continually assess their progress, ensuring they are improving at a steady rate. By having a tutor a year prior to exams will ensure the student doesn't feel overwhelmed.
The GCSE courses are structured in such a way that they assess not just what's learnt from Year 11, but the entire educational journey. Therefore, the more time someone has, the easier it is to jump by several grade boundaries.
Note: We have lots of parents who come to us in January (or even April in some cases) that are expecting miracles and jumps of several grade boundaries.
In such a short time it is nearly impossible and sadly we are not miracle workers.
The student would need to have tuition 3x per week (at a minimum) and be incredibly disciplined with independent study. Although we have some incredible cases of students increasing by 3 grade boundaries in 6 hours, this is HARD work and can be incredibly stressful on the student so should be avoided.
SATs or Entrance Exam students.
If a student needs consolidation with a few areas, or to simply deepen key areas they are expected to have an overall sense of understanding. Therefore, they require a simple fine tuning of their knowledge.
How we can help:
This student would benefit from starting 9 months - 1 year prior to their exam date.
They would benefit from 1 hour a week allowing them to comfortably consolidate knowledge, and further their understanding of previous topics in class, whilst also working on new topics.
Real life scenarios:
Last year one of our students came to us with one mission: to be accepted into a very highly regarded school, one which required the highest grades. Fortunately they were 2 years away from entrance exams, allowing us enough time to nurture their learning and exam skillset.
The level our student was working at meant they were just about passing general exams with fair to moderate gaps in knowledge. Their main struggle was a lack of confidence in exam situations. Generally questions were correct in class but in exams marks were easily missed.
How we helped them:
We sat down with our student two years prior to their exams (giving us enough time to build their gaps in knowledge). Each week they had 1 hour of learning, studying at a relaxed pace with no rush to build up knowledge. For this specific student they preferred to learn through holidays, however we also recommend this time for independent learning of exam-style questions.
Note: We get enquiries often from parents who believe their child needs just exam support rather than topic support and this is achievable in 4 sessions or less.
The nature of exams is that they have such a huge range of exam style questions which can vary massively depending on the topic. This means students will need overall topic support which is then guided into specific exam questions. A few hours here and there will not make a difference to overall grades.
If your child has no upcoming exams but needs a little extra support learning classroom material then we would suggest our general tuition. Typically tuition is given on an ongoing basis at 1 hour per week.
If you have any questions regarding lesson types please feel free to pop us a message in the chat. We're always here to help and point you in the right direction.
At the end of 2022 we launched 2 new branches in London and Easy Anglia! If you are looking for in-person tuition and are located in one of those areas you can send us a quick message below: