Every child is unique and has their own individual learning style. It is for this precise reason that private tutoring can be extremely effective for students of all ages.
Classroom learning has its limitations as teachers are not always able to spend time teaching each student in the way that suits their individual learning style. Research indicates that one-to-one tuition can be effective, on average accelerating learning by approximately five additional months’ progress.
Private home tuition can be beneficial to students to students that are working below the expected level of achievement and students that are working well above their peers.
Parents seek private tutoring for a variety of reasons. This may be to boost a student’s confidence in their learning, to close any gaps that may have been found in his/her learning, to help a child prepare for an internal or external school examination or to simply provide the child with support and awareness of his/her abilities and give the student a sense of challenge outside of the school setting.
One of the advantages of working with an expert private tutor is knowing that the private tutor will be able to deliver personalised lesson tailored to their student’s specific interests, academic needs and learning goals.
The greatest benefit of this form of personalised learning when compared to classroom learning is that tutors are able to set each tuition session at a more suitable pace where students may find the classroom teaching too fast or too slow. Classroom learning will usually be at a pace that is suited to the average pupil in the class. However, some students will grasp topics much faster than others and some pupils will need more assistance with certain topics.
Unfortunately, in most schools are bound by schemes of work and topics that must be covered by the end of the academic year and therefore the teachers cannot spend the required additional time on topics that one or two individuals may be struggling with.
Another advantage of the personalised learning that takes place in private tuition is the ability of the tutor to spot misconceptions, areas of weakness and recurring mistakes that may not have been noticed in class. Again, this may be due to time constraints within the school that weaknesses are observed and recognised but the one-to-one time to deal with these misconceptions is simply not available.
Whilst schools are able to carry out regular assessments in order to determine areas of learning that need the most attention, the areas of weaknesses may not tackled in the best way that is suited to the child’s learning style and this may remain as an area of weakness for many months or even years.
Private tutoring also means that students that are struggling in class cannot hide behind the other students in the classroom as weaknesses will be identified immediately. This can initially be quite daunting to students especially for students that are quiet in the classroom or students feel uncomfortable asking or answering questions in a classroom setting.
It also means that students that are excelling in the classroom can be challenged further in a way that means that they are pushed outside of their comfort zone and expected to have a higher level of thinking and answer questions beyond the typical expectations for their age.