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Top five benefits of tuition

Tuition
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What are the benefits of hiring a private tutor for yourself or your child? What could lessons with a tutor provide that schoolteachers cannot? The format of one teacher and many pupils has existed for centuries, and is a methodology that has produced the greatest minds in history - how can the relatively new configuration of one to one tuition improve upon this?

1. One to one tuition does not have to be seen as a replacement for class learning. The environment of the school teaches social skills, and allows for the formation of friendships, while also providing a form of group learning, where pupils can bounce ideas off one another and acquire a greater understanding of their subject.

Tuition works best as a supplement for school learning, where it permits the pupil to receive focused instruction on specific points they may not have fully understood in class. The tutor will be able to asses their student`s level of comprehension, perhaps over a specific concept, or area of the syllabus, and then tailor their teaching to specifically address the relevant points. This is something a school teacher, who may have as many as 30 pupils in their class, simply won`t be able to do. From their vantage point they can`t be expected to gauge each pupil`s level of understanding as they deliver their lesson, and there simply isn`t enough time for them to provide one to one help for everyone in the class.

2. However competent a teacher is at controlling the classroom, they cannot possibly keep 30 pupils under constant observation. The possibility of a mobile phone hidden on the lap, or between the pages of a book, means the teacher has the entire internet as a competitor to their lesson. Any disruptions in class will also eat away at valuable lesson time, with just one or two recalcitrant students being able to monopolise the teachers attention.

During one-to-one private tuition there will be no time wasted, as the tutor will be able to fully engage with their pupil. By focusing each lesson on topics the student is struggling with, and adjusting their teaching methods to suit their level of understanding, student will feel they are really making progress in their subject.

3. As tuition progress the pupil`s confidence in the subject will greatly increase. This will have the added benefit of making them more receptive to lessons at school, as their increased aptitude from their tuition will lead to greater understanding in the classroom. As with constructing a house, if the foundations are not sturdy enough, nothing can be built - so too with learning, for if the pupil`s comprehension of the basic concepts of a subject are not strong, further knowledge that is reliant upon prior understanding will certainly be misunderstood.

4. School Classrooms can often be a rigid learning environment: the teacher talks, and the pupils listen. This is certainly a simplistic picture, but often it can be difficult for a pupil to raise their hand, and signal out to their peer group that they don`t understand. With a tutor there will be no such apprehensions, and as lessons progress the student will feel more at ease, being able to elaborate without fear of censure what parts of the syllabus they are struggling with.

Given the more informal nature of private tuition, the tutor will be able to stray from the syllabus, and teach the student material that, though it doesn`t directly pertain to the curriculum, will augment their understanding of it. An example might be spending some time on infinite series, as a way to deepen the students comprehension of calculus, or having a lesson on the causes of French Revolution to increase their understanding of the lead up to the Russian revolution.

A School teacher`s time will be so limited that they will barely be able to deviate from the specific points of the syllabus, and so they will be denied the opportunity to help their students in this manner.

5. Most tutors will be happy to travel to your home, and with the increasing prevalence of online tuition, lessons can easily fit into your schedule. Another benefit may be that, as children progress through the year groups their work will naturally become more advanced; and where in the past you may have been able to assist them with certain problems, you may now find their work beyond your abilities! This is certainly not to denigrate the intellectual abilities of parents, but much has changed in education over the last few decades - the introduction of the national curriculum in 1988, and its development over the intervening period, means pupils may be studying things their parents were never required to learn. A private tutor will obviously be well informed as to the current syllabus.

2 years ago
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