To Tutor, Or Not To Tutor: The Pros And Cons Of Getting Outside Help

The 2016 year of education is well underway.

Year 7s have adjusted to the high school landscape. Year 12s are probably having (or have just finished) their first load of assessments.

This is usually the point most of us start considering whether or not we need help to keep from drowning under the accumulating workload.

There are those who, when it comes to anything academic, know what they know, know what they don’t know and know exactly how to bridge the gap between an 85 per cent and a 95 per cent result.

Kudos to you if it felt like you were reading your personality profile.

But for those of us without a heightened awareness of our academic position, seeking help is a bit more difficult.

If you’re unsure whether or not a tutor can help you make the grade, read on.

Private Tutors

Traditionally, when help is required, a student would seek one-on-one tuition with a slightly older student, a recent graduate or an available teacher. The hope is that with more direct attention, the student’s performance will improve.

You can usually find them advertising on Gumtree or via a school noticeboard, but definitely speak to your parents first before reaching out to anyone (and it's always better to go with someone who has been recommended via word of mouth).

Group Tutorials

Group tutoring is basically when tutors re-teach the required content to a large-ish group of people; say 15 to 25. Tutors generate a course that runs parallel to what is taught at school and, much like a teacher, set their own homework and their own assessments.

Group tutoring rests on the premise that receiving the necessary information from two distinct sources will ensure the student is exposed to all the ideas they need to do well.

In the final years of high school, doing well is assessed by a standard independent of the individual school one goes to. You are made to compete with people you’ve never met and are entirely unaware of the resources they have at their disposal.

Tutors give students, and their families, assurance that they are in the best possible position to do well.

Pros and Cons

A lot of teachers choose to celebrate intellectual struggle. They view direct answers as too simplistic and prefer to engage in rigorous debate. They discuss key concepts in their class and subsequently advise their students to search for a deeper understanding; to develop their ideas individually over a long period of time. It's an important process.

Frankly, however, this approach in Year 12 is annoying. Time is an issue and direct answers are helpful.

Part of a tutor’s brief is to unpack key ideas for you and provide direct responses to questions, positioning you to replicate these in exam situations and minimising the overall work you have to do.

And that’s the attraction, but also the drawback.

In group tutorials, a one hour session - addressed to 20 people - inevitably assumes a lecture format. Information is directly transmitted to the students from a platform of authority. This leaves little opportunity for questioning and discussion, one of the key benefits of traditional learning and tutoring.

One-on-one tutoring allows you to closely examine your existing work to identify, and understand, how to improve. It also allows you to discuss and grapple with key concepts. But even then, there are the pressures of a ticking clock and having someone wait for an answer. It can’t quite achieve the same results as allowing ideas to emerge organically.

On top of that, there’s the money situation. Some teachers (especially those who mark exams) charge $70 to 80 per hour. Enough said. (Typical student-age tutors would charge around $40, which also easily adds up.)

While the expense itself shouldn’t be reason enough to avoid getting the help you need, it is a good reason to make you question whether it’s the best help you can get.

A Word of Warning

Tutors don’t get you out of doing the work yourself. In fact, you should be extra vigilant and never treat their word as gospel.

One teacher found that a tutored student wrote “a rather extraordinary essay” that “referred a lot to a clown, [but] there was no clown in the [text]”.

Turns out, the tutor was not familiar with the film in the assessment, but somehow managed to “convince” the student to write an essay about a non-existent character.

So, before you commit to spending more than five hours a week repeating content with a tutor, consider whether it’s really the most effective way of improving your marks.

While tutors can often help improve your grades, it’s possible that spending the same amount of time truly engaging with your studies will reap better results.

Susan Alfayadh is one of Student Edge’s student contributors. Learn more about the contributors program.