Category Archive: Maths

1. How To Settle into Your New School 

   6 September 2024 2:28 pm Leave a Comment

   Starting a teaching job in a new school can be exciting and daunting in equal measure.

   It can also be pretty challenging – whether you are a newly qualified teacher or the new Deputy Head – not least because all eyes are on you; students and staff!

   Here are a few top tips for how to settle into your new school.

   Set Yourself Some Goals

   It’s a fresh start and a clean slate, so your new position in a new school can be what you make it. There are always going to be a few variables and factors that you can’t do anything about, so focus on what you can influence yourself.

   It’s always a good idea to set yourself some goals and plan ahead for where you’d like to be in your new role in six months, a year, or two years. Whether these are formalised as a part of the performance management process or are personal, targets and goals are always useful to have.

   Get To Know the Students

   The students are what any school is all about and you should get to know as many of them as quickly as you can in your new school.

   Obviously, the kids you have in front of you take precedence but make a point of chatting to and taking an interest in the students you encounter on the corridors or in the canteen, or on the yard when you are on duty, for example.

   It will help you feel less of a newbie and make your new school feel like a comfortable new home.

   Build Relationships

   As we said above, the students are the whole point of a school but what really makes things tick are the positive relationships teachers build with them.

   But, or course, these are not the only relationships you need to build in a new school.

   There are your colleagues in your department or faculty; the senior leadership team; catering staff; cleaners, and caretakers.

   All of them play a vital role and are part of the team.

   You should build relationships with them all.

   Have a Presence Around the School

   Whether you are a classroom teacher or are starting a leadership/management position, you should try to be visible around the school.

   Your classroom is your kingdom and if you have the luxury of your own office, it’s a sanctuary – but you shouldn’t hide away in either.

   The school day can be frenetic and fast-paced but it’s still a good idea to visit the main staff room daily, to chat to people, and – as above – to start building those all-important relationships.

   A brew and a chat at lunchtime or at the end of the school day can be really therapeutic.

   Importantly, it will also make you feel a part of the whole-school.

   Final Words

   Of course, ultimately, whatever your role is, the priority is ‘doing your job.’ However, whether this is focusing on delivering the best lessons you can or fulfilling whatever other responsibilities you have, there is always more to teaching than simply doing your job.

   Becoming an active member of the school community will not only help you settle into your new school, it will also make you feel that you belong there too.

2. Planning Ahead for the New Academic Year

   26 August 2024 11:33 am Leave a Comment

   Exam results are finally out – and before you know it the start of the new academic year will be upon us. But with only a week of the holiday still to go, it’s a good idea to start planning ahead for the start of term.

   Rest, Recuperation and Recharge

   First things first, what we’re not advocating in any way here is that you should be working solidly over the next week; far from it.

   Hopefully, by now you’ve had adequate time to recharge the old batteries. And if you haven’t, you still need to. Probably the best preparation for a new academic year is to be fully refreshed and recharged.

   Reflect on Last Year

   Now the dust has settled, it’s worth reflecting on how things went last year with all your classes.

   You will obviously need to look very closely at any exam groups you had and once you know their results, it makes sense to do all the analysis as soon as you can. You can guarantee that you will be asked questions about it come September, so this is another way you can stay one step ahead. Get yourself prepared!

   Set Goals

   Think about what you want to achieve in the next academic year and how you are going to get to where you want to be.

   It’s always good to have something to aim for. It will keep you focused and on track.

   Planning

   Hopefully, you will already have your timetable for September. If you have, it is well worth getting lessons for first couple of weeks planned now. This will make the start of the new term much easier to handle.

   It’s also a good idea to look at your timetable and work out a marking schedule that fits in with it. Keeping on top of marking can be really difficult if you approach it in a haphazard way.

   Plan Your ‘Me Time’ From September

   Self-care often goes out of the window once you are back into the thick of things. You owe it yourself, your loved ones and your students to look after Number One throughout the year.

   That might mean planning a night off in the week; booking holidays or weekends away, going to the gym, or spending more time with the kids. It doesn’t matter what it is, just as long as it’s something that will be good for your wellbeing.

   The fastest way to burnout is to not look after yourself, so you should think carefully about how you are going to do so from Day 1 in September and set yourself some ‘New Term Resolutions’.

   Final Thoughts

   Ultimately, the key to success in the new term is to stay one step ahead. Things are likely to come thick and fast once September comes. And if we’re being honest, it doesn’t really let up for the rest of the year.

   That’s why planning ahead to stay ahead is so important.

3. Why Schools Need to Equip Students with Critical Reading Skills

   21 August 2024 1:28 pm Leave a Comment

   The riots that we saw recently up and down the country following the horrific murders of three girls in Southport were shocking and senseless. They were also a timely reminder of how dangerous misinformation can be; how posts you see on social media, in particular, cannot necessarily be trusted, and how destructive a ‘gang/mob’ mentality is.

   It also pushed sharply into focus how important it is to assess the things you read or hear in a critical way before believing everything.

   This is why it is vital that schools equip students with critical reading skills.

   The Danger of Misinformation

   The dictionary definition of ‘misinformation’ is as follows: ‘false or inaccurate information, especially that which is deliberately intended to deceive.’

   Immediately following the Southport attack, misinformation spread online about the attacker. It was said that he was an asylum seeker. That he was a Muslim, and that he had come over to Britain by boat. A false name was also posted online.

   All of this, of course, proved to be untrue. However, the damage was already done.

   The day after the attack in Southport, rioters took to the streets of the town. An angry mob attacked a local mosque, causing serious damage to its wall.

   Elsewhere in the town, a Mini Mart was targeted. It would seem that the only reason this particular shop was attacked was because its owner was an immigrant – a man of Sri Lankan heritage. The shop was bricked and then looted with £10,000 worth of stock stolen.

   Similar violence spread across various towns with Muslim communities, hotels housing asylum seekers, and immigrants in general becoming the main targets. In the ensuing days looting and damage to property also became widespread. Gangs and mobs set cars on fire and fought nightly battles with police.

   The aftermath of the destruction

   More than 150 people have already been sentenced for offences relating to the riots. The majority have been sent to prison with the average jail term being two years. Several young people have also been sent to Young Offenders Institutions.

   Communities have come together in a remarkable way to repair the damage done by the riots. Similarly, several fundraisers have been set up. For example, a carer in Middlesbrough (an immigrant) returned home from a 12-hour shift to find his car burnt out and overturned. The fundraiser was set up to buy him a replacement vehicle raised more than £65,000.

   The Need for Critical Reading

   It would be wrong to blame all the recent unrest on misinformation spread on social media. It is clear that there is a sizeable number of people across the country who hold a strong anti-immigration sentiment.

   However, it is undeniable that it was the misinformation that spread online that sparked the riots. Furthermore, there have been countless further examples of misinformation all over social media platforms in the last few weeks.

   For example, a community library that was attacked in Liverpool. One ‘reason’ cited for the attack was the ‘fact’ that children’s reading books had been replaced with copies of the Quran. Of course, this was complete nonsense and not true at all.

   Elsewhere online, certain posts claimed that there were 2 million asylum seekers currently staying in British hotels. The most recent official data is for September 2023 and the figure stands at 56,000.

   All of this shows just how important it is for schools to teach young people that social media may disproportionately feature exaggerated or inaccurate information.

   It is important that students are given strategies to critically assess the bias, reliability and accuracy of what they read online.

4. Top 5 Tips for Prepping Your Next Tuition Session 

   26 July 2024 1:01 pm Leave a Comment

   Private tutoring is a different beast altogether from whole class teaching, but one thing is exactly the same: if you want your student(s) to get the most out of a tuition lesson, you need to prepare and plan the session.

   And, as Benjamin Franklin once said, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”

   Here are our top 5 tips for prepping for your next session…

   Plan What You Want to Do

   Of course, there’s no need to produce a formal lesson plan, but you still need to be clear in your mind what you intend to during the session.

   This planning needs to be fluid and certainly not set in stone. Sometimes you will find that the student wants to spend time on something that might have come up in a lesson at school during the previous week.

   And just like in a classroom, the ability to be able to think on your feet and adapt a lesson plan as you go along is really important.

   But – all things considered – planning beforehand is still the secret to a successful lesson.

   Check Your Resources

   You have no safety net in terms of your resources if you are private tutoring in a student’s home.

   There will be no running off to the photocopier, or into your colleague’s classroom next door if you have forgotten something you need for the lesson.

   Therefore, it’s important that you check everything in advance. Make sure you’ve got all the resources you need and that you can easily access them before the lesson.

   It’s always worth having a back-up plan too – a Plan B. This gives you the option to change your approach during the lesson, should you want or need to.

   Objectives and Outcomes

   Again, there’s no need to write lesson objectives and lesson outcomes – or share these with the student you are tutoring. In most schools, this has become an expectation and an accepted part of a lesson.

   But one-to-one tutoring is different and should be different. If a tutoring session essentially just mimics a normal school lesson then what’s the point?

   It would just be giving the student more of the same: more of what obviously wasn’t working for the student in the first place. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be there.

   That said, any tutoring session still needs to have an objective and an aim to it. The outcome, of course, is how you can see that your aims have been met by the student.

   Extension and Extra Activities

   It’s always worth having some extra activities and extension tasks up your sleeve for a tutoring session.

   The nature of one-to-one tutoring means that you only have one person dictating the pace of a lesson. This a great thing, of course. It means that if a student is struggling with something, you can really take your time with them to ensure that they do ‘get it’.

   On the other hand, with only one student to focus on, there are occasions where you can fly through material – a lot quicker than you could ever do with a whole class.

   And, finally – there will always be times when whatever you have planned simply isn’t working. There could be a variety of reasons for this.

   You can’t really legislate for this. Sometimes, it just happens.

   So, it’s useful to have something else that you can move onto seamlessly, if it does.

   Personalise

   Last but not least, prepping for a tutoring session should always involve you asking yourself how you can personalise the learning for your student.

   What are their learning styles?  What type of activities do they respond to the best?

   It’s the thread that runs through all of the above.

   Follow the above tips and your next tutoring session should be a breeze!

5. The School Prom…Why is it important?

   23 July 2024 4:46 pm Leave a Comment

   The School Prom…

   It’s become synonymous with the end of school life for millions of students up and down the country. It’s a BIG thing for many… THE event and night of the year. So much so, that it’s become almost a rite of passage for teenagers.

   But, actually, the school prom is a relatively recent phenomenon in this country.

   Before the turn of the Millennium, school proms were fairly rare events in the UK. Some schools held them, but they were few and far between. If a trend was forming, it was certainly in its infancy.

   And they certainly weren’t the massive thing that they are today. They certainly weren’t a tradition.

   These days they are as much as part of a teenager’s school days as uniforms, school dinners and assemblies.

   Where Does the School Prom Come From?

   Well, for the answer, we need to look across the Atlantic to the good old US of A.

   As with many aspects of our popular culture, the influence comes from America. As the saying goes: If America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold!

   Blame Hollywood and countless TV shows – especially rites of passage/teenage dramas.

   The school prom is almost an ever-present in the storylines of the latter. And with the school prom being so embedded into American life, it’s no surprise that it’s been covered so much in films and TV since the 1950s.

   Strangely perhaps, one of the fundamental aspects of the school prom US-style – the question of who will be your date for the night – hasn’t caught on so much this side of the pond.

   But pretty much everything else has been copied from the American prom traditions and incorporated in

   The prom dress for the girls, the suit for the boys, the glitzy and glamorous entrance by limousine, sports car, or even helicopter.

   Yes, the school prom just seems to get bigger and bolder and more expensive as the years go by.

   Is it a Good or a Bad Thing?

   Well, as with anything, there are two sides of the coin here.

   The financial aspect of the whole thing is certainly problematic. Especially with the cost of living crisis and the statistics that show millions of UK children living in poverty.

   It puts pressure on parents, school prom can be expensive. However, we are seeing a rise in money saving prom schemes.

   There’s an argument that the school prom is just another example of how those growing up in lower socio-economic areas and with less affluent parents are disadvantaged.

   But on the flipside, young people deserve a big night out. They deserve a chance to let their hair down, and a reward for all their hard work for their GCSE and A level exams.

   And, like it or not, there’s no getting away from the fact that Prom Night has become the calendar event of Year 11 or 13 for many, many teenagers.

   Just as GCSE’s are important, there can be denying how important the school prom is to teenagers or how much they look forward to it.

   Everybody deserves to celebrate the end of their school days in style, surely?

6. Making the Transition Between High School and College

   3 July 2024 10:43 am Leave a Comment

   With the GCSE exam season over for another year, students can feel both relieved and proud. It’s no small feat. GCSE exams are undoubtedly one of the most challenging periods of time that many young people will have had to face in their lives to date.

   We don’t want to scare anybody here… but life does have a habit of throwing all sorts of challenges at you. These can come left, right and centre – at all sorts of moments.

   They come at you thick and fast. And hot on the heels of the exam period and results day comes the transition between high school and college.

   So, we thought we’d put together some key pointers about making the transition to college life seamless and straightforward.

   First Things First: You’ve Done It All Before

   First off, it’s worth thinking about this: you’ve seen and done it all before!

   Okay, so that’s not strictly true – but you have gone through (and survived and thrived) the transition from primary to secondary school.

   Whichever way you look at it, the move from primary school to ‘big school’ is way more traumatic than the move from high school to college.

   Yes, you are bound to be a bit nervous and possibly a little anxious. However, that’s completely natural and to be expected.

   There’ll be a few weeks of semi-confusion as you get to know your new surroundings. But once you’ve found your bearings, you’ll be as right as rain.

   Things Are Done Differently at College

   Although most young people know it already, many are still thrown a little bit. Which is understandable by just how differently things are done at college.

   Obviously, there’s no uniform. There will no teachers waiting on corridors to tell you to take your coats off. Yep, you are finally treated like adults!

   The thing is – although all of this is great – it also means that you expected to act like an adult too.

   And while colleges offer a great range of support and guidance for their students, it doesn’t really compare to the level of support most students get at high school.

   There will always be somebody to see and somewhere to go if you need some help, but you are expected to stand on your own two feet much more at college.

   The Challenge of A Levels and T Levels

   Another worry that many students have about starting college is a simple and obvious one:

   Will I be able to cope with A Levels?

   Most students will be moving up from Level 2 qualifications to Level 3. Of course, these are . bit more demanding. Which is why many students find the initial step up a bit of challenge

   The vast majority go on to cope comfortably with the higher level of work. But you will need to apply effort and determination if you are to succeed at this level.

   But you’ve got this!

   Enjoy college and good luck!

7. Setting Up a Tutoring Business in 2024 – Step 3: Your Name

   25 June 2024 7:53 pm Leave a Comment

   It’s All In The Name.

   Every company has a name. Some are well thought out. Others are plain rubbish. Some answer the question “What do they sell?” in a word. Others leave you guessing what the link between product and name is (I’m looking at you Apple!).

   By now, you’ve probably already read Steps 1 & 2 in this series of blogs. If not, it’s worth starting at the beginning here – seems like a sensible place to start, right? Assuming you’re all caught up on our previous two steps, let’s get stuck in to the next.

   Figuring out what the hell you’re going to name your tutoring business!

   Check That You’re Original

   You might think that it’s easy coming up with a name for your business – but often, you’d be wrong. And there’s plenty of reasons why. Let’s address the main struggle for naming a business straight away – not being the first to come up with it! But how do you know if somebody has already beaten you to that God-sent name that has just popped into your head? Easy! Check out this page on the Companies House website. It’s essentially a free to use database of all registered companies. You can simply type in your preferred Company name and – with any luck – nothing will come up!

   There’s a good chance you’ve just tried this feature straight away and, like most people, are left frustrated that some lucky so and so out there has already taken it! Don’t fear. You see, your name can still be the same as theirs – well, sort of. There is the slight ‘loop-hole’ of being able to register a trading name, as well as your official ‘registered’ name. It means that your customers can know your business by one name (trading), but your “official” name (at least as far as the government is concerned) can be used in small print only and so isn’t really used, or even widely known, by your customers. If you want a bit more information on this, check out this useful blog post from GoSolo.

   Don’t Be Too Clever

   It’s easier said than done – especially when you want to be regarded as an all-knowledgeable academic service – but try not to be so clever with your name that you come across sounding more like a type of medication than a provider of education!

   Sometimes simplicity is key. It allows your potential clients to easily identify what your services, and sometimes even values, are in one or two words. Take our name – TutorRight. I’m sure there are a thousand more creative names out there, but it does something really well… it tells you what we do and what we’re about: We tutor, and we do it right! I take zero credit for the name, as it was my wife who actually cooked it up, citing RightMove as a point of inspiration (we do both spend an ungodly amount of time on their app searching for the lottery home of our dreams!).

   Avoid Cheese

   Forget the fact that I’m one of only a handful of humans deemed “crazy” for not liking cheese (it’s true) – when you’re deciding what to call your business, you obviously don’t want to make it sound lame and cheesy, to the point that kids and parents alike roll their eyes when it’s said out-loud.

   That means avoiding OTT claims within your name, such as “Best Tutors Ever Ltd” and copycatting more prominent names, to create “Tutor Hut” (the cheese theme is strong, right?).

   It’s a personal dislike, but including slang can, in most cases, belittle what you want your tutoring company to represent – solid academia. So, in other words, “Getta-Grade Inc” should definitely “do one”.

   Being playful with your name can work, but of course, there is a fine line. You don’t want to be caught on the wrong side of being humorous and being silly. There’s also the chance that, just like me, you’re told by every person who knows you that you’re just not funny to begin with… which hurts. But then, it might be true… And if it is, being the dad joke of the business name world isn’t a prize you really want to get up on stage to accept.

   Your Name

   It goes without saying, but a lot of people will often flirt with the idea of naming their company after themselves. I mean, why not? Sure, it’s a little egotistical, but it’s your business!

   Well, here’s a couple of things to consider if you do decide to go down that route:

   • Not all surnames were created equal. That’s right – and you know it. Take my last name; “Walsh” is a fairly non-descript, middle-of-the-road kind of name. It wouldn’t particularly stand out to potential customers, but it wouldn’t draw ridicule. But what if your last name is “Smellies” or “Nutters” (yep – both real surnames)?
   • What if you wish to sell your company further down the line? If I’d have named my business “Chris Education” not only would I have sounded like a B-movie character who is quickly killed off, but it would have been tricky for Sarah or Phil to wrap their heads around offering to buy the company off me later down the line.

   Whatever you decide to go for, just remember, your name can be changed further down the line. But – it’s not always a straightforward process.

   An extra point of consideration would be to check that the URL isn’t already taken. This is an easy check by using sites such as GoDaddy and typing in the name that you’re considering.

8. How Can Tutors Deal with the Summer Drop-off of Tuition Work

   14 June 2024 8:36 am Leave a Comment

   Anybody that has dipped their toes into the world of tutoring for at least a year may well have learnt the hard way that the work that is available during the summer holidays drops off, the Summer drop-off is real.

   In fact, ‘drops off’ is a massive understatement to be honest… it falls off a gigantic cliff!

   You can go from having literally no free time to fit in any more students to having none at all in virtually an instant – and that means your income takes a serious hit.

   Planning For a Summer Drop-Off Is the Key

   The key to dealing with the Summer drop-off is planning for it in advance. After all, you do know it’s coming. And the Summer holiday’s are important – we talk about exactly why that is here.

   In many ways, tutoring is no different from several other sectors and industries – it is seasonal.

   The retail sector is largely reliant on Christmas sales; pubs depend on ‘beer garden weather’ in the summer – and the tourism industry largely shuts down between November and March.

   Tutoring is the same. You have to get it while you can because July and particularly August are likely to be barren periods.

   One way to deal with this is to do what these other sectors do – try to make a much as you can when you can so that you have enough saved to cover the quieter months. Make sure you also take the time to learn how to budget across the year!

   Take On Other Work

   Another option is to take on other work and look for different income streams during the summer months.

   For tutors, the most obvious thing that springs to mind has to be exam marking.

   Of course, the timing of exam marking fits in quite nicely with the drop off in tutoring. In fact, it’s almost perfect.

   As exams run from May to June, the marking period essentially runs from May to July (and maybe just into August).

   There will be a bit of a crossover with your ‘normal’ tutoring commitments at the start of exam marking, but – depending on the subject – you’ll probably find that the busiest marking period begins around the same time as the tutoring begins to drop off.

   The other great thing about exam marking is the experience you gain from doing it.

   Make no mistake, nothing puts you in a better position to be able to help and support the students you tutor than having the inside track on what examiners want to see.

   Not only that, as there are exams in every subject, it doesn’t matter what your specialism is – there is work out there for you!

   The Element of Risk Brings Rewards Too

   Finally, it’s important that we end on a positive note.

   Moving from a comfortable salaried job to the world of self-employment can be a daunting prospect.

   Unless your self-employment is largely made up of long-term contract positions – which, of course, as a tutor it almost certainly isn’t – you need to be mindful that your monthly income is likely to be variable.

   You need to be prepared for it to go up and down. And as a tutor – seriously down in the summer.

   There is always an element of risk but if are comfortable with this, it gives you the freedom to try different things and take on new challenges.

9. Setting Up a Tutoring Business in 2024 – Step 2: Your Niche

   12 June 2024 2:29 pm Leave a Comment

   So, you’ve weighed up the pros & cons of setting up a tutoring business and you’re now all in. You’ve established your ‘why?’ and feel confident that you’re in it for reasons that will hopefully lead to a fulfilling (and potentially lucrative) career!

   Well, that’s all well and good. But now comes the tough part. Now you have to actually do some of the groundwork to put your plans in to action. And it’s not exactly the most glamorous of steps. You see, one of the most common misconceptions that budding entrepreneurs make is that they assume that a skill or service they value highly is one that the rest of the local population will also be delighted to utilise. And sadly, that just ain’t the case!

   Research, Research, Research!

   So, how do you know if you even have a prospective clientele base to work with in your area? This is easy… if you take a stab in the dark and guess. But, that doesn’t sound like a good plan does it? Taken too far in the other direction, and it can become quite a quagmire of statistical studies, time spent researching local consumer behaviours and everyone’s favourite – canvassing your friends, family and every poor sucker that stumbles absent-mindedly past you, clipboard and questionnaire conveniently at the ready.

   My suggestion – forget both approaches and follow the advice outlined below.

   Is There A Demand?

   This is an obvious, and elementary, question to pose. But if your plan is to set up a tutoring business for face to face tuition in your local area. The first thing you want to consider is whether that is feasible

   Let’s say you live in a small village, where the local school holds a grand total of thirteen students. The chances are that relying solely on the income generated by your tutoring business from private face to face tuition is perhaps a little ‘unrealistic’.

   If this sounds scarily like where you currently live then don’t worry. You don’t have to frantically list your property on RightMove, pack your cases and to head to the city!

   A larger local population is certainly an advantage, but even that doesn’t guarantee they are the right demographic for your services. In areas that would be considered financially deprived, it probably doesn’t matter if there ten or a ten thousand students. Their money is going to be spent elsewhere on things that are probably more pressing to the quality and comfort of the collective household’s situation.

   Understanding this is really, really important.

   So how can you determine whether you’re currently in an area that wants a new tuition business, or one that would simply carry on living their lives happily ignoring any offers you thrust in their face? Well, a quick solution is literally a click away – my friends, let me introduce you to… Google.

   Okay, so chances are you have almost definitely heard of this nifty search engine. But let’s consider it as a tutor service database. And the best part? You can search for agencies, directories and even one-man bands in or around your exact target area!

   When researching whether there was a need for a ‘TutorRight’- style tutoring business in Warrington originally, I simply searched “Tuition Companies in Warrington”, “Tutoring Business in Warrington” and “Tutors Near Me”. Sure enough, before my very eyes, Google told me that there were several (loads, actually…) in or around Warrington town.

   Now, what does this mean? Well, I deduced that it was unlikely ten completely random individuals all took an uneducated punt at approximately the same time and were all currently at the same point in their journeys. And wouldn’t you know it? After looking at a few of their websites, I found that they were all at different stages of their journeys.

   Now, sarcasm apart – what does this really mean? Some had been established for twenty-plus years, whilst others were only in their second year of trading. And both categories led me to the conclusion that, if there wasn’t a need, then why would there be competition in the first place?

   Sometimes a bright idea that comes to you whilst peeling potatoes or taking a shower seems to solve everyone’s problems…

   Until you investigate it as a business idea and soon realise there is a good reason why nobody has bothered to bring it to reality – it either makes zero financial sense, or somebody has done it before, and they crashed and burned.

   Having established tutoring companies already in the community gave me a strong indication that there was a need for the service. Having fairly new companies still operating past their first year gave me a comforting indication that it wasn’t too late.

   They had started a company in the same sector, despite their established competitors, and they had enough business to get them through that first financial year. Which, as we’re led to believe by the statistics surrounding businesses in their infancy, is no mean feat.

   Now like I said, there are plenty of technical, advanced – even expensive – ways of determining the need for tuition in your locality, but the Google hack is certainly worth exploring!

   How Do I Compete?

   Congratulations! You’ve discovered that there is competition in your area! Wait? What? Surely that’s a bad thing? Well, as discussed above, it doesn’t have to be viewed that way. The real issue now is how to complete with those competitors.

   Did you find that your competition focused predominantly on secondary school exam prep, such as for GCSEs? If so, as a primary school trained professional, you might have the perfect skillset to offer a similar service but for a slightly younger target market. It could even be that you and your competitor put your heads together and refer parents to one another if there are services that you don’t offer, but the other does.

   Maybe you discovered that there was so much attention related to Maths & English tuition, that as a qualified Science teacher, you can offer a subject that seems to be in short supply. Again, starting with a particular subject can differentiate you. This in turn can help single you out as the authority in your field. After all, only you specialise in that subject.

   But what if there are already primary, secondary, subject-specific focused tuition companies already available to students in your area? How can you stand out when there are already varied options vying for the local parent’s approval?

   This is where marketing, brand and company culture come in. And for me, these are the “fun” aspects to work on in your business. All of this happens a bit further down the line. After all – we don’t even have a name yet!

   To look at the task of naming your future empire, look no further. Make sure you check out Setting Up a Tutoring Business in 2024 – Step 3: Your name

10. Setting Up a Tutoring Business in 2024 – Step 1: The Why?

    4 June 2024 7:51 pm Leave a Comment

    So, You’re Considering Setting Up a Tutoring Business?

    With plenty of head-scratching questions filling your head, potential knots in your stomach and friends, family, and colleagues questioning your sanity…

    It makes complete sense to do some research!

    But where do you begin? You’re probably eager to see how to price up your services and bag your first paying tutee. However, it’s important to take a sensible approach and reflect on one simple question:

    Why are you looking to set up a tutoring business?

    The “Why” To Setting Up Your Own Tutoring Business

    If you’re reading this article, there’s a good chance you are considering opting for a different career path to the one that you’re currently on. Whether that is leaving the teaching profession, entering the education sector for the first time, or simply wanting to gather inspiration for setting up a small business to call your own, the chances are your current job isn’t quite fulfilling your needs.

    So, why consider setting up a tutoring business? That’s really what you, and only you, need to answer. Nobody else will know exactly how your current circumstances are influencing your feelings and decisions.

    Helping To Answer Your Why

    Let’s have a look at some of the common reasons to enter the tuition game and hopefully provide you with more answers than questions!

    We each have our own perspective on life. On how we should manage our work-life balance and how we would ideally like to spend our valuable time.

    If you’re looking to start a tutoring business to have more free time, then you’re in for a shock! Of course, it all depends on your current workload, what your expectations are going into this process and how big (or small) you want your potential empire to be.

    Like any other start-up, a serious amount of time and effort needs to go into the early stages. Especially to get things off the ground initially. Plus, learning things that may be completely alien to you – such as business taxes and registering a company – takes time. Gov.uk is a great place to start. However, if you’re already familiar with that sort of jargon (or do friends’ tax returns as a hobby) then you can discount some of this time. However – if you have never run a tutoring business before, you’ll still need to dedicate a period of time to better understanding the profession. You will want to consider it’s need in your local area, the size of the opportunity in your location (unless you’re considering online tuition, which somewhat negates this) and the business model you intend to follow.

    “I want to be my own boss!” – a great idea in practice, but have you considered the implications involved with being the boss? Whether you plan on being a solopreneur or scale up to a full-blown operation consisting of hundreds of employees, the major decisions, headaches, and angst will rest on your shoulders. It’s not all doom and gloom of course. Ultimately, you’re in charge (to as much of an extent as is possible) of your professional fate. You get to decide who to hire and fire. You get to decide what the company culture will grow in to. And you get to pick the subjects and services that are offered to your students.

    Are you perhaps looking to move away from the ironically playground-esque staffroom politics within your current teaching role? It’s certainly a good enough reason to leave, but is it the reason for setting up a tutoring business? If you want to avoid the drama, but remain in education, would supply work offer a better solution?

    Found Your Answer?

    Hopefully by reading till this point, you have made some progress with reflecting on your why. Don’t be too stressed if you feel no further to discovering your why – there is no right or wrong answer. Besides, it doesn’t need to be a defined mission statement with which to base your entire business plans around.

    Make sure that, when you have identified your ‘why?’, it is strong enough to make the plunge worthwhile. There is nothing worse than dipping your toes in, failing, and then berating yourself for your business’ shortcomings.