Is Tuition Agencies Really Worth it for tutors?

Having to pay the tuition agency after they have sought a tutor or a client out, is it really worth the price? According to the tutor’s point of view, having to fork out the fee after the tuition agency found a client for him or her, is it worth it?

If you put some thought into it, you would realize that by contracting with a tuition agency, it would save you a lot of time from searching for a client.

With its available resources, a tuition agency can easily market and advertise a tutor and within a short time span, find a suitable candidate for the tutor. However, if the tutor advertises on his or her own, wouldn’t it take up more time and money than needed? The result would also not be certain and unless the tutor’s qualifications are exceptional, it would be hard to find a student in a short period of time. Thus, paying the agency for its services is really not a big price to pay.

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Why are the Services of Tuition Agencies Required?

Often, when parents or students seek out a home tutor, they find themselves hiring a home tutor that does not fit the criteria that they hoped for. This wastes the precious time of the student that is seeking to improve his grades and they have to carry on looking for yet another tutor. There are many parents that have complained about hiring a tutor that does not have the qualifications to teach and yet charging an extorting amount for fees. Thus, tuition agencies come in hand in times like this.

By looking for a tuition agency for their services, parents and students can be reassured that the home tutors that have contracted with the tuition agency is usually qualified and the agency will be responsible for employing the tutor. With such a service, parents and students will simply have to state the criteria of the tutor they are looking for and be put at ease.

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Private Tuition or Tuition Centers

Which one should you choose: tuition center or private tuition?

This article goes out to parents out there who are deciding between sending their kids to tuition centers and getting them a private tutor.

When deciding where to send your child for tuition, tuition centers will seem to be an attractive option. But, are they really good? Let’s find out.

Benefits of sending your child to a tuition center

Price is usually the main factor that spurs you to consider sending your child to a tuition center. Sending your child to a once-a-week, two-hour tuition at a tuition center costs you only a little more than half the price of getting private tutor.

Furthermore, tuition centers usually promote themselves as hiring only qualified teachers to teach in their centers, which makes them more attractive. On top of that, certain tuition centers are often integrated with after-school care services, which enable you to leave your child in the hands of an experienced care taker after tuition classes.

You may visit pros and cons of group tuition for more details about group tuition

Benefits of getting a private tutor

On the other hand, getting a private tutor has its advantages too. Even though private tuition costs significantly more than tuition centers, private tutors can undertake a more targeted approach to address the needs of your child, whereas tuition centers are more like miniature government school classes, where 15 to 20 students come together to practice under the supervision of one qualified teacher.

Private tutors also offer you and your child the flexibility in choosing the time, duration and location of lessons that best fit your busy schedules, instead of having to accommodate to the fixed timings of the tuition center classes and to go out of the way to send your child to the tuition centers for tuition. You will also be given a say in which subjects and topics the private tutor should focus on to suit your child’s needs, as compared to a generic lesson plan at tuition centers that caters to a general audience.

Engaging a private tutor for your child also provides you with the opportunity to observe how the tutor interacts with and guides your child, something that is not possible if you send your child to a tuition center.

Considering both sides of the coin, you can now make an informed decision on where to send your child for tuition – to a tuition center where your child gets a chance to do additional practices on a subject with a smaller group of peers, who might or might not be of the same level, or to a private tutor at the comfort of your home, where your child learns under close guidance and follows a curriculum that matches his or her progress.

At the end of the day, it all boils down to what your child needs to achieve from tuition. If he or she just needs more practice, he or she could get it at tuition center or even alone at home, under your occasional supervision. But if your child needs help to understand what is going on in class, it would be wiser to opt for a private tutor. In the end, you must remember this – you only get what you pay for.

You may visit pros and cons of private tuition for more details

Which learning method suits your child most?

While most of us rely on the schools and the Ministry of Education (MOE) to develop and adopt the best learning methods for our children, it is difficult to come up with a one-size-fits-all learning method that every child is comfortable with. In order to teach efficiently to a large group of students, schools tend to adopt the learning method that best suits learning in a big group. One such method is lecturing, where school teachers teach and the students listen and learn passively. Though this method ensures that the teachers can finish teaching the allocated syllabus within the stipulated time, it may not be the best method to help students internalize the knowledge taught.

Most children cannot learn just by listening; they need to see and do it themselves to fully understand. This is why schools and enrichment centers are now adopting creative learning methods that encourage hands-on activities, where children are given the chance to understand through the use of various senses, instead of just listening.

In the recent years, Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) has developed to become a popular and effective model for identifying effective learning methods for students. NLP is a behavioral model that studies how excellent individuals think and communicate to become successful. From there, NLP develops a series of tools and strategies to identify and remove ineffective behaviors and to encourage effective ones.

Here are some of the learning methods that you could consider using for your child at home to stimulate learning:

Graphic stimulation

If your child finds it difficult to remember concepts in his or her textbooks, try using graphics! Mind mapping is a good way to help them. It allows your child to summarize important points of a topic on a single piece of paper using different colors, graphics and keywords, and to arrange them in a manner that helps them to remember better. Summarizing also allows them see the bigger picture and understand the concepts better.

Music-aided learning

Some children cannot concentrate when it is too quiet around them. For these children, playing relaxing and soothing music quietly in the background while they are studying can help them to learn better. However, do take note of the type of music used. Try using classical music or jazz and avoid using music with lyrics, so as not to create unnecessary distraction.

Show and tell

Instead of teaching on paper, try and engage your children by making their lessons ‘come alive’! For example, when teaching them about plants, bring them to the Botanical Gardens and show them the plants! Let them have a chance to see, touch and smell the plants. Such hands-on lessons enable the children to remember and relate better to the information taught in their textbooks and also help to increase their learning interest.

By identifying and adopting a learning method that best suits your child’s learning pattern and interests, you child will be more inclined to study and will become a more effective learner in time to come!

Is Mother Tongue important?

As a full-time tutor, I often take on tuition assignments that cover English, Mathematics and Science, but very seldom for Mother Tongue. Whenever I ask parents why they do not want to get a Mother Tongue home tutor for their children, I will often get the answer ‘Mother Tongue is not important’.

Parents tend to rank the importance of a subject according to its weightage in schools. Generally, technical subjects like Mathematics and Science are perceived to be more important than language subjects as these subjects are the ‘scoring’ subjects. English is added into the package not only because it is one of the ‘scoring’ subjects, but also because it is the language medium used to teach all other subjects except Mother Tongue. This leaves Mother Tongue in an awkward position.

Language subjects used to be as important as technical subjects in the eyes of the education system and in that of the parents and students. But ever since the society becomes more and more English-oriented, people are slowly losing interest in and exposure to their Mother Tongue, which they deemed unnecessary.

The education authorities responded by changing the teaching approach for Mother Tongue, especially for the Chinese Language, to a ‘more enjoyable’ one, where students do not need to be worried about reading and writing the complicated Chinese characters at the beginning, and only need to focus on oral communication and word recognition.

Little did they know that not only does this encourage students to lessen their focus on Mother Tongue as a subject, it also prevents them from building a solid foundation in their Mother Tongue. As these students move from oral to writing stages, they realized that they have big shoes to fill within a short time. The steep learning curve further discouraged them from learning their Mother Tongue.

As time pass, students become more and more ‘westernized’. They have forgotten how to read or write in their Mother Tongue. Some Chinese students do not even know how to write their Chinese names! While this is a worrying trend, many parents chose to overlook this fact as they think that Mother Tongue is not crucial to their children’s future. However, many failed to realize that this is no longer true.

With the rising of China as a global power, many native Chinese are streaming into the rest of the world to work and to do business. As a result, Chinese is fast becoming an important language to learn when dealing with China companies. There is now increased demand for bilinguals who are good in both English and Chinese to do the necessary business translations. This used to be an edge that Singaporeans have over others. However, with the declining Chinese standards in Singapore and the increasing English literacy rates in China, native Chinese are fast overtaking Singaporean Chinese in terms of bilingual ability.

If our students continue to disregard their Mother Tongue, they will very soon be phased out of the race and eventually lose their competitive edge in the workforce. So, is Mother Tongue really that unimportant?

This article was written by Vivien. Vivien is a full time tutor who is teaching at the western area of Singapore. She taught English, Math and Science for Primary School student. If you are a parent who is looking for a full-time home tutor at the western area of Singapore, you may give us a call or submit your online home tuition registration. Our friendly staff will call you as soon as possible.