How to evaluate a tutor's effectiveness

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

Many schoolchildren get acquainted with their first tutor when they begin active preparation for the State Exam and the Unified State Exam. This is not surprising, because even one point that was not obtained in school exams can be decisive for admission to the chosen university. So how do you evaluate the effectiveness of the chosen tutor and what should parents of high school students pay attention to?

Finding a quality tutor is sometimes as difficult as finding a doctor or lawyer. And the point is not only in geographical remoteness (the development of Internet services partially solves this problem), but also in a limited number of really gifted and passionate teachers. But as soon as a result is needed, all means are good in the struggle to achieve it. Moreover, in this case, nothing but an attentive attitude to the teacher and the success of your child is required.

Making a short list of candidates

The first thing that can be done is to try to assess the effectiveness of the still future tutor by objective and indirect subjective criteria.

When it comes to preparing for the Unified State Exam or State Exam, a potential applicant for a teaching position must have relevant experience. At least a few years in the profession is also a useful criterion, although not sufficient in itself.

Subjective assessments are no less important - recommendations from people you tend to trust are best. It is only important not to trust blindly, but to be guided by common sense. And just for this, a meeting is important, during which it is worth conducting a kind of interview.

First meeting

The weakest link of most modern teachers (tutors) is not even in the absence of a clearly structured body of knowledge, but in the inability to effectively transfer this knowledge to students. Ask the teacher how he plans to work with your child.

At the first meeting with a student, an experienced tutor should be able to identify his strengths and weaknesses, possible gaps in knowledge. Based on the information received, he will propose to develop an individual work plan based on the number of hours available for training.

Usually, intensive tutoring begins about a year before the expected exam. Wherein the student meets with the tutor at least twice a week - if less often, the efficiency of material assimilation is sharply reduced. Meeting more often is difficult for objective reasons: there is not always a financial opportunity, and the student's time is often limited, because usually you have to study with several tutors in different subjects at the same time.

Preparing for the EEG - it's still a long-distance race, even if it starts just a few months before the X hour (not the best practice, but it also happens). In any case, the tutor should determine several points of intermediate control, which will allow you to synchronize watches and assess the progress of mastering the material covered.

All these are simple and obvious truths on which the teaching methodology is based, but even modern tutors often forget about them. However, any theory without practice is dead, and sooner or later the choice in favor of one of the candidates will still have to be made.

Learning process

The easiest way to assess how well the teacher's choice was made is to see how the student completes his homework and how willingly he conducts classes.… The highest degree of the art of teaching is the ability to interest even the most negligent student and convey material even for the most retarded.

It is important not to let the process take its course: the tutor should set up the teaching process in such a way that the student cannot afford to leave the material unlearned or do tasks slipshod … These are the direct duties of the teacher, and not of the parents, as is often mistakenly believed.

If everything goes the way it should, the results shouldn't be long in coming. Moreover, the results are quite measurable and unambiguously interpreted. For example, improving academic performance in a studied subject at school, winning olympiads, and so on.

Work for results

We live in a rather aggressive competitive environment, when we need to defend “our right to” every day, and no sane parent wants to waste their child's time ineffectively. A professional tutor should be able not only to transfer knowledge, but also to motivate for the result. In other words, the ideal tutor is your child's coach. And football with its striking victories and annoying defeats is the best analogy here.

Kirill Bigay, co-founder and managing partner of Preply

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