When Should I Start Tutoring for my Child?

You have been thinking about getting academic support for your child. However, you are unsure when to start tutoring. This video is for you.

TRANSCRIPT

Good morning! This is Jason Ursino from Learning Space, and I'm driving to school.

Today I'm going to be talking about the best time to start tutoring.

So if you have a son or daughter and you are thinking of doing tutoring. You don't want to start tutoring just before their HSC, at the same time, you don't want to start tutoring before they start Kindergarten. So when is a good time to start tutoring?

Generally speaking, a good time to start tutoring will probably be just before they start high school. The reason for that is because between primary school and high school, there is a little bit of a gap and some students get overwhelmed when they get into Year 7, especially for Mathematics. You probably remember back in the day, and you see it all over social media. It says something like, “Mathematics was all good until letters got involved”. In Year 7, that's pretty much when you start Algebra. And Algebra is that extra leap in mathematics, and if students don't have a good grasp of their math's before they start Year 7, then they will start to think that Algebra is a little bit beyond their reach. So starting tutoring about Year 6 - Year 7 is probably a good time to start. That's the general case.

Obviously there are exceptions to this. There are students who are pretty good at the start of Year 7, and perhaps only need tutoring from about Year 10 to get themselves well established for the high level math's in Years 11 and 12. Almost every student who does Extension 1 - Extension 2 has some sort of support outside of school. So that it is something not only for students who are struggling, but also for students who want to get a little bit ahead as well.

Where you would want your son or daughter to get tutoring at a younger age, is if you have a student that's in the early years of primary school, and you find that they are falling behind in their reading and the writing and the numeracy; probably would be a good idea to get some tutoring just to get them up to scratch. I wouldn't be pushing too hard about getting them forward. I know that there are people who'd like to tutor to a particular test like the Selective School Tests or the OC Tests. However, as a teacher, it's a little bit against my philosophy, the idea of tutoring towards a test. Tutoring should be more of a holistic view of improving the academics, not just getting into a selective school.

If you have a son or daughter who is in Kindergarten or Year 1, that young, and you find that they are getting behind, before considering tutoring, I'll be considering things like getting their eyes checked, getting their hearing checked, because it could be something as simple as that holding them back in terms of their academics.

So that's the general idea of when to get your son or daughter into tutoring. Generally speaking, I would say between primary school and high school, Year 6 - Year 7 is probably the best time to start tutoring and getting into a program of study from there.

If you liked my videos, there are more of them at learningspace.net.au/drivingtoschool and have a good day.