Ever since I moved to the UK, I've kept hearing the same old thoughts: "You're good at maths!" "You can teach A-level!" (I don't even mention I tutor university students too!) "You have a maths degree!" And after all that: "You should teach maths! We need maths teachers here!"

Of course, you do. Everyone needs us. But why am I a maths tutor rather than a maths teacher?

I obtained my maths degree in a study program focused on teaching. Even though I studied at the Faculty of Science (and got my biology degree too!), I had some psychology-didactics-nonsense courses as part of my study program. Not saying it was entirely pointless, but I learned more about how to teach by actually teaching and tutoring my students than by learning all the theoretical stuff in my teaching-related courses at uni.

While working in a school, regardless of whether it's a SEN (Special Educational Needs) school—where I worked the longest, I see even more clearly the difference between a tutor (an independent individual who meets you, the student, in personally tailored sessions) and a teacher (the individual in a school who does an enormous amount of paperwork while not teaching during some school hours and even after school hours – what a horror).

For me, as a tutor, the student is still a person whom I get to know very well. I understand their needs and can provide the best services for them, teaching them the most they are capable of (in terms of maths). When talking about teachers, not to mention they have large groups of students at one time, they cannot really focus on individual needs. Students must necessarily become statistics (and that, of course, applies to every teacher, not only maths teachers who can/should be able to deal easily with all the statistics that need to be done). Because there are a lot of numbers and data to be gathered and put into nice tables and given to some school office people who can claim more money when having better results. Sounds harsh, but put in non-fancy words, that's how a school must work because running a school is also a business.

I am not saying your teachers don't care about you. And I am not saying tutoring is not a business. I am just pointing out the difference and the reasons why I'd rather tutor students privately, be it 1-1 or a group of students (of a similar range of abilities to ensure the best understanding for everyone in the group), instead of becoming a maths teacher in a school.

This is just a very brief overview and doesn't cover every aspect of being a maths tutor versus a maths teacher at all. And we need both anyway. I've just chosen my path, and I'm happy with it.

Even private tutoring has its disadvantages, but I still cherish it more than becoming a maths teacher and teaching maths full-time in a school. My opinion may change later, I'm not saying it cannot*, but being a full-time maths tutor is what I've always loved to do and what I want to do for good for a couple more years (together with my other maths-related businesses, but that's a different story...).

*While my opinion can change, I'm heading to my 20th year of tutoring (hello, this is Veronika from the future, updating an old article), and every year I'm only getting happier with my decision to never really be a teacher (besides the short time when I technically was teaching in schools, but that's a different story and something I simply had to do, for a little while).

So, in the end, try to appreciate your teachers. They do an awful lot of work on top of giving you rashes when they want to get answers from you about Pythagoras' theorem, histograms, indefinite integrals... and all the crazy maths stuff you don't really get. And then you come to me as a maths tutor because I have more time to explain it in a way that will suit you the most, and then maybe you can stop hating maths in the end. Because it's not so bad... But I tried to explain this in my previous article, so I'll keep this agenda of mine for myself today =)