Does your child need one?
Online tutors
At kitchen tables across the country right now, a familiar scene is playing out. Exam season is fast approaching, and with it comes the daily standoff between parents and children over what constitutes “proper revision”. All you want is for your kids to achieve their full potential, but when there are important Snapchats to be sent, getting them to actually knuckle down during the Easter holidays is no mean feat.
So what is the answer? Should you take two weeks off work so you can sit with them like some sort of live-in tutor who also happens to make the dinner, do the washing and chauffeur them around? Not likely. Should you shell out for expensive tutoring sessions to help them pass their exams? One in four families do so, often spending extortionate sums to get their children up to scratch for the 11+ or GCSEs. Whatever your approach, one thing is for sure: the whole affair ends up being just as trying for you as for the kids.
“It’s clear that parents are as stressed as their children when it comes to exams,” says Eddy Chan, who has created an online tutoring service that could provide the answer to so many parents’ revision season woes. Eddy started schoolexams.co.uk after he found his own children – Alice, 13, Christopher, 10, and Nicholas, six – were getting to an age where they needed assistance outside the classroom, too. “Two years ago, my daughter started asking me for help with maths. I would try and she’d say: ‘But we don’t do it like that, Daddy!’ ”
Eddy’s website, launched last December, was born out of a frustration he and his wife Maria felt having to fork out for expensive tutors when the children needed one-to-one help. “You hear horror stories about super tutors who are being paid thousands of pounds and people are taking them on holiday with them,” Eddy says. “The good ones are very hard to come by because parents don’t like to admit that their child is being tutored and if they do, they don’t like to share them out because they want to keep them to themselves.
“And headteachers are not keen because it’s a wholly unregulated market – you can post yourself up on any of those websites, and they’re not required to have any proof of their qualifications.”
Eddy, who worked in the City trading for hedge funds and banks before leaving four years ago to spend more time at home with his children, hopes his website can provide a much-needed alternative. The site is an online portal of past papers, from Key Stage 2 through to GCSE, all with accompanying video tutorials hosted by experienced tutors. Families can purchase a single paper (£2.49) or a series. The child takes the exam (which can be done on paper, an iPad or a phone – perfect for getting in a few questions on the school run) and then mark themselves along to the video, hosted by a tutor who sets papers for one of the exam boards. “The videos replicates the tutor experience, telling where the marks were awarded and going through all the methodology behind the answer.
“It’s also far more convenient – the kids can do it in their own time, rather than rushing to a tutor straight after school when they’re tired.”
Eddy – who also runs another site, schoolreviewer.co.uk, providing parent appraisals of schools across the country – says the site is working for Christopher, who, like all of Eddy’s children, goes to a private school near their home in Surrey and had been seeing a maths tutor. “The main thing he liked about it was it was so much fun. It feels like a game. They are in control, they can watch the videos with headphones on the sofa and mark their own papers. It gives them independence.
“And if you need to brush up on your own skills so that you can help them better yourself, you can always watch the tutorials with them.”
His main aim, he says, is to make it easier for families on low incomes to access tutoring. “I’ve gone as low as I can on the price,” he says. “The whole argument against grammar schools was that those who can afford tutoring will have a better chance at passing the 11+. Our 11+ materials are £3.99 and the exam is £2.99. They are rock bottom because I want the site to offer an alternative; 25 per cent of kids are being tutored but what about the other 75? I dare say they’d like to, but they just can’t afford it.”