Many believe that tutoring is only needed and essential for those children who are struggling and needing help with their homework and to improve the grades. The fact is tutoring is beneficial for children in a number of positions. For those who are already well advanced, tutoring can be advantageous in preparing the child for the next year, future topics in the syllabus and thus getting a head start. Increasingly however tutoring is being employed for those pupils who are planning on sitting entrance level exams in order to be accepted to higher and more elite schools and education facilities.
It is unquestionable that the advent of the internet has brought added interactivity in learning and education for pupils and people of all ages and abilities. The internet also has a comprehensive knowledge base that would rival many public libraries, although the authority of some if not most of these educational and knowledge based resources can be questionable. For example, Wikipedia a number of years ago did not have the proper and right levels of control and security over its editors and contributors and thus the information it published. Now of course it is a different story and is probably the pinnacle reference point for all knowledge.
Online tutoring will usually follow a set, standard and progressive learning procedure that will ultimately start at more foundation and beginner’s level and subjects leading right up to more challenging and higher levels. This automated tutorial will not be able to understand when a child needs extra help and assistance on certain subjects and nor will it be able to change the way it tries to explain something. These online tutorials usually follow a ‘one size fits all’ approach.
Personal maths tutors will have the experience and expertise of tailoring and personalising the learning material for each child. As each child learns at different paces and picks up and learns information at different ways, qualified maths tutors can not only understand this but work with it maximising the impact of any education and any future learning with each individual child. Furthermore the reinforcement of a person; a tutor instead of a ‘Well Done’ graphic is always responded to more encouragingly by the pupil. Learning through teaching has been practiced for hundreds if not thousands of years, so it is no surprise in the effectiveness of tutoring and employing Maths tutor. Online tutoring does not fit every child and is not always as effective, but the use of online educational resources such as BBC GCSE Bitesize is a great supplement to full time education and a Maths tutor.