Tutoring — for the digital age
Robert Grabiner wants to revolutionise the traditional way of tutoring. By Candice Krieger
AGROWING number of investors and b u s i n e s s m e n believe that education is the oneto-watch sector for technology to disrupt. Robert Grabiner is one of them. A former executive director of programme management at ABN AMRO, he has launched an online start-up, which he hopes could revolutionise the traditional tutoring market.
MyTutorWeb provides live, oneto-one, private tuition for GCSE and A-Level students over the web. By doing so, Mr Grabiner — the twin brother of prominent investor Stephen Grabiner, former head of global media at Apax Partners — believes he can cut the cost of tutoring by around 50 per cent.
Father-of-two Mr Grabiner says: “Like most parents, I wanted my children to be tutored by someone excellent, but the cost can be prohibitive. It occurred to me that the advances in technology mean that this no longer has to be the case.”
MyTutorWeb comprise students from the UK’s top universities including Oxbridge, Birmingham and King’s College London. Mr Grabiner’s business model is simple: hourly sessions at £16 an hour, compared to traditional methods, which can cost over £35. Mr Grabiner takes £6 on each session. Sales revenue forecasts for the next three years are modest at £1.5 million. But the potential is huge — there is a readymade market. An estimated one million people sit GCSEs each year — around 300,000 do A-levels. According to the Department of Education, for the academic year to June 2011, 772,924 pupils took maths, 13,282 took additional maths and 53,400 took statistics.
“We are hoping to achieve our target of harnessing one per cent of the GCSE/ A level tutoring market by the end of 2013 at an estimated delivery of approximately 1500 tutorial sessions per week. Initial take up in December and January has been good: the first GCSE and A Level students who signed up have all booked repeat tutorial sessions, which is a good indicator that we will continue to buildournumbersveryquicklythrough ‘word of mouth’ recommendations.”
He acknowledges that the quality of the tutoring is key to the concept’s success. As is the increasing availability and use of broadband.
According to Ofcom, 76 per cent of UK adults have a broadband connection, and this number is set to significantly increase over the next few years. The government target for 2015 is that 90 per cent of the UK will have access to high-speed broadband.
“It’s only now that broadband has become so popular,” says Mr Grabiner, who has spent most of his career working on tech-related projects for major organisations. “So hopefully I’ve chosen the right time. The technology has always been there but it’s a case of using that technology.”
All customers need to use the service is a broadband connection and webcam. MyTutorWeb takes registrations, sends messages to students and enables parents to watch back the sessions online if they wish. There is also a TripAdvisor-style ratings system and plans, says Mr Grabiner, for many other innovations.
It is no secret that the educationsectorisbeing — and will continue to be — disrupted by technology. Among the advocates are Microsoft’s Bill Gates and internet entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, one of the