The pupils studying through Christmas
Guy Kelly talks to parents using the school holidays as valuable extra teaching time for their children
For teenagers around the country, the Christmas holidays are just that: brief respite from the rigours of homework, revision and impending exams. A chance to do precisely nothing before it all kicks off again. Yet not everybody has it so easy. For an increasing number of schoolchildren, the “Twixmas” break between the winter and spring terms gives them – or perhaps their parents – valuable time to call for reinforcements. Namely, a postchristmas, pre-new year tutor.
“We have scholarship exams looming in February, so we like to bring in some extra support at home when we can,” says Vicky Black, a mother of two girls and two boys in rural Gloucestershire.
Black describes her eldest daughter, 13-year-old Rosie, as “a little buried in her abilities” when it comes to non-humanities subjects, so to boost her all-rounder status before secondary school selection in the coming term, a live-in tutor has moved in to give Rosie three days of Latin and French lessons this week, before being replaced by a maths and sciences specialist for a two more days.
“[Rosie] will have had a day off after Christmas, but then the lessons start again. She has a fantastic work ethic – and it’s entirely with her support that we do it – this is really a revision aid, but more focused.”
Black, 42, uses Tutor House, the London-based service, to find tutors willing to live-in for the short periods over school holidays. Tutor House launched its residential service for the 2017 summer break, responding to what it considered an overwhelming surge in interest, driven by the evertougher race for school places.
In the year between the summers of 2016 and 2017, requests for live-in tutors doubled with the firm, from 50 to well over 100. As a result, clients can now choose from dozens of residential tutors with varying experience and qualifications, at any time and for as long as they see fit. The package has an introductory price of £1,500 per week, for 30 hours of flexible tuition over six days, but the service and prices can be tailored to each pupil.
“Most clients come to us out of fear and pressure from school,” Alex Dyer, the director of Tutor House, said upon the launch of the service in June. “We don’t deal with many four-plus exams, but the pressure starts from then.”
Since the summer, Black has had several recent university graduates or academics share her home for days or weeks at a time. They get their own room with a television, can eat with the family if they wish, and have been happy to provide the odd free lesson for her younger children, too.
“One tutor was vegan, so that got a bit tricky, but they just made their own meals,” she recalls, sounding mildly horrified at the memory. “One came on holiday with us to Wales. The service is expensive, but they’re all fantastic role models and teach much more generally, rather than sticking to the set exams or curriculum.”
While Rosie’s perfecting her “amo, amas, amat” down in London, Mark Boxer’s 17-year-old daughter, Scarlett, will this week trade in the dregs of her Christmas holidays for extra lessons in her A-level subjects of English, history and foreign languages.
“It sort of happened by accident rather than design, and it was all her idea – she came to me a couple of years ago when she did her GCSES and asked if she could have some tutoring time in some subjects, and it has been paying dividends so far,” Boxer says. “The upside is that it’s tailored for her: oneto-one, with no distractions and at her pace, unlike college.”
After she completed her GCSES at boarding school, Scarlett moved to a state sixth-form college in London, allowing Boxer – a divorcee who works in finance – to hire extra tutoring help.
“The expense tends to stack up, but it’s clearly affordable compared with school fees, and it’s a different type of learning,” Boxer says. As far as he knows, tutoring is commonplace in London, but he doesn’t plan to reveal to Scarlett’s college that he had hired help, for fear of being judged.
“You hear these horror stories about ‘tiger parents’ forcing their children to do extra tutoring rather than letting them go out and have fun, but it isn’t like that, and I wouldn’t want people to think it was. She still does everything she wants; she doesn’t sacrifice anything.”
Perhaps other parents aren’t so lucky, but for Black and Boxer, their children’s enthusiasm for making productive use of their spare week means they feel no guilt in the situation. But are their daughters missing out on fun?
“Not at all, it’s non-stop jollification over the Christmas days, I promise that,” Black says. “All pupils have some homework over the holidays – this just makes the most of it.”
Visit tutorhouse.co.uk. Parents can also access online tuition through The Daily
Telegraph’s dedicated tutoring service (tutors.telegraph.co.uk)