Hi there! Before we start, you should know one thing. If you don’t know me yet, my name is Veronika, and I have spent over 20 years supporting learners of all ages and abilities with maths. And in this blog post, I’ll try my very best not to toot my own horn. I swear. If I do, call me out on it. Seriously. In this article, I aim to share truly unbiased, honest thoughts, no matter what I think about maths tuition or other kinds of educational help and support. Not that my other articles aren’t honest and unbiased, but sometimes I do have a specific relevant idea in mind that I want to share when I write for the blog. But not this time.

Yep, it will be challenging, of course, and no, I’m not saying I won’t add thoughts from my own experience; they will be valuable, but I do not aim to sway anyone one way or another and definitely not planning on any sneaky “hey, get in touch if you need help with maths”. I mean, come on, you’re already reading my blog. If you need my help with maths, you know what to do (just head on over to my home page and get in touch, duh 😉)

So, that’s the important intro done; let’s get to the big thing — choosing the right support, when is the right time for it, and why you might need any in the first place. And if you know me even a little bit, you know a few curveballs are coming 😄

Btw, this one turned out to be rather long, so for TL;DR, scroll right towards the end of the article.

Now, buckle up!

Start here if you’re considering getting maths support for your young learner

I’ll assume you’re at the stage where you decided, without being pushed into that by someone who “means well”, that your young learner needs some kind of support. Because there really isn’t any universal reason for tuition or a course, and loads of learners do well without any additional support. They do well in their exams, get to good schools, colleges and universities… and yes, if you home educate and these things are not in your education plan, the idea applies too. Just because you home educate (whether you plan for exams or not), it doesn’t mean you will need extra support. You may be just fine with what you already planned, your chosen resources or activities. So this stage is fully up to you and your young learner to figure out. If you’re not happy with how the studies are progressing, then it’s time to find extra help — whatever shape and form that might be.

And before we move forward, we may need to categorise a few things. Your journey might be quite different from others depending on whether you home educate or your young learner goes to school. Or perhaps you’re looking for maths support for yourself as a mature learner.

But even if you ask people in similar circumstances what worked for them, remember: every learner is unique, and what works for one may not work for another.

So, before jumping into the search for the best maths support, try to think about what your learner needs. What their learning style is. What really works for them. What they say they want, and also what they don’t want. They should have a say in it too. I know this isn’t rocket science, but there really are still so many people out there who go and look for a tutor, for example, just because “everyone in the class has one” (so what?) or “people say I can’t home educate at this level without tutors” (more often than not, you totally can).

It’s always oddly satisfying to say that getting a tutor isn’t always the ultimate way forward, given my background (enter Veronika, tutoring maths for over 20 years 🙃).

But of course, my job exists because it’s needed. There are plenty of learners who thrive with a tutor, of course. I just want to challenge the idea that you need one if it turns out you’re in it for the wrong reasons, which won’t serve your young learner and ultimately your wallet, either.

A similar idea goes for other kinds of support: learning courses, with or without tutor support, completely self-paced resources, be they online, offline, textbook- and worksheet-based, or interactive… you name it.

Therefore, we’re getting to the key question, if you truly feel help or support is needed:

How to choose the right kind of support?

Try it.

That’s it, really. I could just leave this part of the article be; no more words needed.

But of course, I’ll share more guidance here, as best as I can.

I’ve already tackled part of this in the first few paragraphs. Your first step should ideally be having a discussion with your young learner about what they need and what works for them. Are they happy to work quite independently? Do they want someone to help them more directly? And if so, would they feel better in groups or in a smaller setting? Or would they want a bit of accountability — accessing classes live, but not having to interact too much? I mean, that is why all sorts of tuition support exist: one-to-one, small groups, large groups (you can think of those almost as lectures — very popular at universities), as well as in-person vs online. I’ve been through so many different ones, so I can see firsthand that none is superior; it’s always about the learner’s needs first.

If someone is trying to tell you what your young learner needs without knowing anything about them, I’d advise you to be careful. It’s likely they just want to secure more business.

Say, when I advertise or even reply to someone asking for help, I just say what I currently offer; it’s up to the family to decide what it is they want — or what they want to try. For example, I offered in-person tuition for a very long time. Then Covid hit the fan and I went online. I found that online tuition works really well for many learners and it also works way better for me. So I kept offering online tuition only. And yes, I’m happy to talk about all the advantages of online tuition. But I wouldn’t dare try to persuade anyone that “online is the best”. It’s not. It’s just one of many good options we now have because we have the internet. Hooray! A very long time ago, I even did tuition over the phone (a normal phone, normal call, back in the early 2000s — no video calls back then). Trust me, that’s not ideal. But when in a pinch, even that works, clearly — I have testimonials to prove that 😁

So, let’s be happy we have so many (good!) options these days.

What sometimes isn’t ideal is when you’re after a specific kind of help, but can’t get what you want. Say, you’re looking for in-person tuition, but no suitable local tutor is available. Or you’re looking for 1-1 tuition, but your budget doesn’t allow it. I know that sucks when circumstances limit the desired options.

But usually, what you ideally want isn’t the ONLY way that would work for your learner. That’s why I always suggest looking for the closest alternatives when needed. Try out something you wouldn’t consider at first. You may be surprised that it actually works quite well, too.

Let’s move on to the happier scenario, though — you know what you’re after and you know you can get it. The next problem sounds like a good one to have, but it isn’t: 

How to choose among so many options?

Try it 😄

No, seriously! I know the above advice is becoming a theme for today’s article, but not undeservingly, or just to be comedically humorous. Let me elaborate.

Say, you’re after an online 1-1 tutor (so you have LOADS of options), and that’s actually starting to cause you mild to moderate anxiety.

Btw, did you notice I intentionally chose an example of something that’s not my main service anymore, to make sure I don’t fall into a trap and start tooting my own horn? You’re welcome — that’s unbiased reading all the way for you.

What I typically see is this: You post on FB, in some dedicated tutor or community group, that you’re “looking for an online maths tutor for my 12-year-old child”.

First of all, that’s way too broad; that’s why you get so many overwhelming comments. The more details you add, the better filtering you can do. And I’m trying not to be judgemental here, but I’d say you can safely ignore all one-word comments that simply say “inbox”, “PM”, or “interested”. (If you’re a colleague educator reading this, please take that as a hint — such comments won’t land you many new clients.)

Even with little information, a good tutor would either ask for more information or perhaps share clearly what they offer so you can do the filtering.

I personally rarely reply to “looking for a tutor” posts with little information. Maybe we’d be a great match, who knows? But if I don’t know what you’re looking for, whether my offer would even be at all helpful to you (for example, I don’t tutor primary maths anymore, so if the above 12-year-old from my example actually needs to strengthen primary skills, I won’t be the best match), then I don’t want to waste your time or mine.

So, the more information you add, the easier you can filter the options. In that case, I’d boldly advise also filtering out generic responses. I get it, we’re all busy and a great tutor might just not have time to fine-tune their reply to your post because they’re busy with actual tuition. Which is a good sign in a way, but when you look at it more closely, I wonder: would they have time to give any extra support outside of lessons? Not that it’s something you have to get, but I’d say that’s quite a standard part of service to a certain degree. Tuition isn’t (well, I’d say it shouldn’t be) purely transactional, so if the tutor is too busy to personalise their answer even a tiny bit, to me it might be a sign of what they might be like once you’re doing business with them (hint: perhaps great, but too busy to support you fully).

Maybe I’m wrong. It’s just my opinion — food for thought, if you wish. Take it or leave it, that’s completely up to you.

So, when you find someone who fits your criteria and seems like someone you’d like (often you can find more potential candidates), then the next step is obvious.

Yes, you’re guessing right — you should try it. Not that trialling tuition is like getting a free sample. Not all educators and services offer a free trial, but it’s much easier to try before you commit. Even if it’s a paid trial — as long as it’s something you won’t get locked in right away (especially if it costs a lot of moolah). Because sometimes you’re then required to pay monthly, termly, etc — so of course you want to make sure your young learner will like that support if you pay in advance.

And ideally, before you try, what might also help is to have a bit of a conversation with the tutor. While this is not always possible, it can certainly help. That can be a useful pre-step before you actually try a lesson.

Just briefly about things that are a bit different from tuition. The above example described tutors, specifically “one to one online”, but it pretty much applies to all sorts of support where a tutor is involved (groups, in person, etc).

But how about resources or self-paced courses? Again, the best is to try. (You expected that at this point, haven’t you? 😄) Paid or free, if there’s a trial, that’s your best way forward. If there isn’t a trial, then you’d absolutely want to check as many independent reviews as possible — on Google, Trustpilot, etc. (Honestly, to my knowledge, Trustpilot is quite expensive to get your hands on as a small business, but Google reviews are a pretty good resource of independent reviews and free to set up for the businesses, so that’s a win-win.) And if the reviews are generally good and you like the resource features — which you know should work for your young learner, because earlier you had that conversation together about what would work for them — that’s a good candidate to try.

But since tuition is such a personal thing, I want to get back to that a little bit more. The next step, if it’s tutor support specifically you’re looking for, would be to decide this:

How to choose a really good tutor?

Hmm… try them? 😁

Obviously! But, of course, you can’t try dozens of tutors. That’s just too time- and energy-consuming, and it’s not best for the learner either — bouncing back and forth among various tuition styles and approaches each educator inevitably brings along with their expertise and personality.

So, I’ll share a few observations (yep, still as unbiased as humanly possible while I talk about something that I’ve been doing for more than half my life) on commonly discussed “flaws”, as it’s not all just black and white.

A warning: I’ll be directly drawing from my own experience here, but again, I’m not doing this to toot my own horn here, just to paint a picture with real examples.

Is a tutor good if they don’t have many students?

Yes, they can be. There may be loads of legit reasons why a tutor doesn’t want to or can’t be “fully booked”. For example, they may have other responsibilities. Of course, you may worry that these responsibilities could interfere with your tuition arrangement. And frankly, chances are they will. But honestly, good luck finding someone who’s got no responsibilities apart from your tuition arrangement. That’s almost impossible, and if someone does manage that, very likely, it’ll come at a cost.

Imagine I have caring responsibilities for an elderly family member (that happened to me a few years ago, and that’s the thing — life happens; it’s not always one’s choice). I could either juggle family and business, or charge premium prices to afford a carer to not let my “other responsibilities” interfere with my business. I chose the first option, and none of my clients batted an eye when I told them that, for the foreseeable future, there might be emergency changes. Because I still did my very best to keep any emergency interruptions to an absolute minimum.

So yes, not having full books might be by choice, not because someone isn’t good enough. Therefore, I wouldn’t rule someone out just because they don’t shout from the rooftops “only two spots left”. And for extra insight, that “two spots left” magic sprinkled over people’s messages is often a marketing gimmick.

Is a tutor good if they’re not a teacher?

Or, the old-but-gold “I’m a qualified teacher, so I’m the best”. No offence to qualified teachers, but qualification alone was never a sure way to prove one’s qualities in any profession. That’s why you can have bad doctors, bad lawyers, bad dentists, bad psychologists, yes, also bad teachers, bad judges, you name it.

It’s really important to understand that tutors don’t need a qualification and may have all kinds of backgrounds and life experience. This comes with both good and bad implications.

Good: You may find tutors who are young — perhaps teens or uni students — and may better click with your young learner. You may find tutors who have actually lived the subject they teach because they worked in the field and may bring valuable real-world insights to the sessions. You may find (bilingual) tutors from all over the world with a variety of cultural backgrounds and native languages that may click with your own cultural background and language, even if it’s “maths taught in English” that your young learner needs right now.

I’ve had a fair share of Czech, Slovak and Polish clients since I moved to the UK, despite the fact that I don’t advertise myself as a tutor of Czech origin. Some people sense that anyway and gravitate towards what they know. Native English clients have also told me that my accent is my superpower (literally) and that their teen really enjoys it. That’s just a little insight into when people ask for a specific “neutral English accent” or “native English speakers”. You may be surprised by what you get when you try to broaden your search.

Bad: You may get someone who simply claims they are a tutor, but is not good at what they’re doing.

This can often happen when they have little to no track record. Everyone has to start somewhere, of course. However, my best tip for new tutors (if anyone new to tuition is reading this article, too) would be: let’s be open about this. Say you’re just starting, share your expertise, and yes, maybe offer to work for free or at a discount to build that expertise first.

When I started, as a 17-year-old (apart from some occasional support for my classmates for a few years prior to that), I didn’t expect to get paid to tutor. I just wanted to help. I was offered a payment for my time, and I was really grateful. Long story short, it turned out I’m good at it, so then I started advertising myself as a tutor. And have been for over 20 years now. Btw, I still don’t have a teacher’s qualification. I don’t think I’ll ever need one anyway. As I often mention, a little fun fact: I didn’t need a teaching qualification even when I was briefly teaching in schools. Hilarious, right? Apparently, being able to teach maths was enough. (I just didn’t enjoy it, and as quickly as possible, I got back to tuition once I didn’t need the little bit of extra money covering for teachers.)

Is a tutor good if they’re not from this country?

I’ve partially covered that above, as it just flowed naturally while writing. There are both great and not-so-great tutors all over the world, of course, but I’d expect your concern would likely be regarding your young learner’s curriculum. And the answer is yes, it’s absolutely possible to learn the ins and outs of a curriculum even if the person didn’t learn it themselves.

See, for example, I’ve done all my studies in Czechia, but at this point, I have done many more years of tutoring and got far more testimonials for GCSE and Nat 5 (and beyond) than for Czech “maturita”. In fact, I don’t even feel confident enough to tutor “maturita” anymore (I know it’s changed a lot since I did it myself and tutored it to a few hundred private students back in the first 8 or so years of my tuition career… plus, I don’t recall all the Czech maths terminology as easily as when I was using it on a daily basis 🙈).

So, what you should be asking is the tutor’s experience with the specific curriculum you’re after. Their background isn’t always the best indicator — their most current experience (and how long they’ve been doing exactly that) is more important.

Is a tutor good if they have no online presence?

Oh… this is a tough one. At first glance, absolutely yes — having an online presence isn’t an indicator of whether someone is good at what they do. The main issue is trust. Personally, I’d feel quite uncomfortable, say, just having a phone call and then paying someone, perhaps via PayPal (although I heard they have a good track record of buyer-oriented chargebacks), for any sort of online service. If in person, it may make more sense if someone doesn’t have a website or some social media profile, because you’ll meet them eventually. But if it’s an online service, having an online presence makes it much easier to check whether things look legit and that you’re not heading towards a scam.

The more online presence a tutor has, the less likely you’ll encounter any unpleasant surprises. It still doesn’t correlate with being good or bad, but it can simply ease your worries when sorting out an online tuition arrangement.

Is a tutor good if they don’t have many testimonials?

How about if I rephrase it: “Is a tutor good if they have many testimonials?” What sort of tricky question is that, you wonder, right?

I’ve added this one given a recent experience. Of course, we all expect testimonials to flag a tutor as a solid choice, especially if they have many good ones. And in most cases, yes, it may be just down to making sure they click well with the learner — ‘cos no matter how brilliant an individual tutor may be, they may simply not click with a particular learner, and that’s ok. It sometimes happens even within a family, where one sibling gets on well with a particular tutor, and the other doesn’t.

But even with many good reviews and testimonials, I still advise caution. Sad and disturbing as it sounds, reviews can be fabricated, stolen… or simply not fully reflect the tutor’s conduct.

Just a couple of days ago, in fact, I read a testimonial about a colleague educator I know by name but have never met (I do meet with colleagues — in person and online — it’s great for networking and being able to recommend someone safely if I can’t help personally). It was a bad review, explaining in depth why they went to the length of writing it to warn others. Yes, I know even a bad testimonial might be fabricated as a means of defamation, but it really felt genuine, and it made me think about how to tell what is real if you see a review, good or bad.

I don’t have an answer to that apart from — yeah, to lighten the mood — try it 😄 It’s ok to follow your gut and try a tutor. Or a course, or a resource, should I circle back to the bigger picture.

Just make sure you’re not committing to a long prepaid term when you’re still unsure if it’s the right match. That can be tricky if it turns out your chosen education support is less than ideal for your young learner.

So, is “Try it” the ultimate way to find the best support?

Yes, it all boils down to trying whatever candidate you choose to help your young learner with their education. And of course, all the above doesn’t only apply to maths. But it’s what I have experience with, so I naturally wrote the whole piece from that perspective.

But browsing through too many options or considering suitable alternatives if your first choice isn’t available can be tricky and time-consuming, so let me summarise this for you here; I hope it helps:

1. If you’re considering that your young learner may need extra support with their learning, have a chat together about what kind of help they may like and find useful.
   
   
2. Look for the options, and if it’s not possible to find your ideal choice (due to constraints like location, budget, or simply because what you’re looking for doesn’t seem to exist for your level, language, or specific needs), think about the closest alternatives you could consider.
   
   
3. If you’re posting enquiries yourself, add enough details about what you’re looking for so you can filter out the most suitable candidates easily.
   
   
4. See if you can get a trial (either free or paid) to test things out first.
   
   
5. Rinse and repeat until you find the rainbow and unicorns your young learner deserves!
   
   

So, that’s about it. Now, I wonder if you allow me to toot my horn a little bit here, after all... But not in the expected way! I promised! 

See, I wrote this piece because I'm constantly seeing people on social media asking for help with “so many choices” and “how to find the right options”. This also prompted something else a little while ago: I started video-journaling about my testimonials, what I learnt from them, which usually turns into some advice on how to find a good tutor or what to look for. It’s kinda fun (at least for me), as I roll a dice and let it decide which testimonial to talk about — so it’s unscripted and puts me on the spot. And yes, I ramble a little bit (that’s my thing when you let me talk freely about whatever!), but I think that really brings out the golden nuggets that might be genuinely helpful.

I’ve shared a few and have a few more I’ll be sharing soon (y’know, the algorithm likes something to be fed regularly, so I didn’t dump them all at once).

The best place to find them all together is my YouTube channel — here’s the direct link to the actual playlist. Enjoy! 😄

Good luck with your searches, and if you didn’t just scroll through to the TL;DR, but actually read the whole piece — well done! I know it takes time, but trust me, not as much as writing it. I’ve spent a good chunk of the day on it. That includes checking for typos and the minor English grammar gimmicks my brain, exhausted from long writing, sometimes invents. Because yeah, I won’t lie, typos still happen, no matter how much English is embedded in my brain at this point.

So if you like any of my articles, I always appreciate it if you share them with others. A lot of time goes into creating them, so I hope they can help as many people as possible. IF they’re helpful, that is—I’ll let you be the judge 😁 Peace out!