I’ve been thinking. Some would said that’s never a good thing.
But there’s a problem with grinds or tutoring in general that nobody really talks about online. I’m going to raise my head above the parapet and highlight some things that are just wrong with the whole private tutoring industry.
It’s bias
The biggest thing that I discovered when I was doing one-to-one grinds and classes was that you end up biassing students. How many times did a person look great in the one-to-one class with me and then get to the actual exam and just nose-dive? Panic. Not perform to any level that I thought they were able to in the one-to-one class.
This genuinely took me a long time to figure out. When you’re doing that one-to-one class, it feels great for everyone. You’re encouraging, you give them confidence, you tell them they can do it, and you’re almost actively just helping them to do questions. This is great and parts of this are really necessary for the confidence.
However, what you end up doing is the teacher always ends up doing the question for the child. It’s bias. You are subconsciously biassing a student into doing the question with them and they’re not able to hit the cold hard exam on their own under pressure with no one to the left or right of them guiding them along.
Passive versus active learning
Passive learning breaks my heart! In class, whether it’s grinds or in school, it is lectures and you’re listening. You can put in all the research but passive learning and listening, especially for maths, is as good as null and void. It is useless!
It is all about active learning and in school and in grinds we don’t push active learning enough. That’s why I have built this tech platform at Breakthrough Maths to include live in real time testing in our classes. If you can’t make the learning active in the actual class, you are wasting everyone’s time. Listening feels great but it’s ineffective. Actively putting yourself under pressure, feeling the burn, as I often say, is what moves the needle in terms of improving your ability in maths.
Inconsistent standards
The grinds and tutoring industry across Ireland and England is still very much a cottage industry. It’s students doing it one-to-one after college to make some money or teachers doing it one-to-one after school. They are the biggest players in the market.
Yes, you’ve got companies like Breakthrough Maths coming to the surface where they’re providing programmes and set standards, but the dominant player is this kind of cottage-based industry. The problem with that industry is it’s inconsistent. Some teachers are much better than others and I’ve seen this because I’ve employed them on both ends of the spectrum. For every 20 teachers you get, ultimately my experience has only been that one or two of them have actually been effectively good at understanding the rigours of teaching maths effectively.
You also have the problem with no follow-ups from people because you’re scheduling out one-to-one classes. Some weeks are missed and as soon as you miss weeks doing grinds you lose the benefit because it’s all about consistent practise. That’s what really frustrates me with the tutoring industry. It is inconsistent and still this cottage-based industry with a lack of consistent standards, consistent work, and consistent practice and that is what’s needed for maths.
The future of grinds or tutoring?
Who knows honestly where the industry moves towards? It probably will become more mainstream. It probably will become more standardised with companies like Breakthrough Maths. However, for these agencies who have thousands of tutors in the books, I think they will die a death. I just think it’s inconsistent. The price is all over the place. It’s not a good service for the parents or students. Some tutors are great; others are the worst. I think those industries are short-term fixes.