Every family of means ends up with a tutor at some point: for the entrance tests at ten, for the maths that suddenly stopped making sense at fourteen, for the Oxbridge interview or the SAT. The tutoring market has grown into an industry with agencies, residential placements and hourly rates that would embarrass a barrister, and the quality varies from transformative to fraudulent.
What a tutor costs
In London, Zurich, Geneva and Munich, a qualified subject tutor charges 60 to 150 euros an hour. Former examiners, Oxbridge admissions specialists and tutors with a track record at a particular school charge 200 to 400. Agencies add 20 to 40 percent. Residential tutors, who live and travel with the family, cost 6,000 to 15,000 euros a month plus flights and board, and are worth it only for a family that moves or a child who has fallen badly behind. Our Household Staff Budget has the ranges by country.
The three questions
Before you hire, ask three things. First, what exactly is the goal: a grade, a test, a habit, confidence? A tutor hired to fix a grade will teach to the exam; a tutor hired to fix confidence will teach differently. Second, who is the tutor's last three pupils and what happened to them? A good tutor has references who will take a call. Third, how will we know it is working? Agree a measure: a mock paper, a school report, a conversation with the teacher after a month.
Red flags
- A tutor who does not ask to see the school's syllabus and the last two reports.
- Sessions that run to time exactly and end with no homework and no notes to the parents.
- A tutor who criticises the school. Good tutors work with the school, not against it.
- Any promise about a specific school or university. Nobody can promise Eton or Harvard.
- A child who likes the tutor enormously and improves not at all. Charm is not teaching.
Green flags
The tutor sends a two-line note after each session. The child does the homework without being asked. The tutor tells you, after six weeks, that the child no longer needs them for this subject. That last one is the surest sign of all: a tutor who works towards their own redundancy is a tutor who is teaching.
Online or in person
Online tutoring works well from about twelve for subjects with a right answer, maths, sciences, languages, and less well for essay subjects and for children under ten. It opens the market to the best tutors wherever they live; a child in Marbella can be taught by the best further maths tutor in Cambridge. In person remains better for young children, for anything with confidence at its root and for the weeks before a big examination.
The agencies
The good agencies vet their tutors, know the schools and can find a specialist for a specific entrance test within a week. They are worth their commission for a first hire and for residential placements. For ongoing subject tutoring, once you have found a tutor you trust, hire directly and pay them properly.
One last rule: a tutor is a supplement, not a substitute. A child who needs a tutor in three subjects is a child in the wrong school, and the answer is the School Finder, not a fourth tutor.
