Focus on: tutoring


The changing face of tutoring – how it can help not hinder


In our second feature this month, we speak to Mark Maclaine, co-founder of Tutorfair, who explains how the company is aiming


to give learning opportunities to children who are in need of tutoring but can’t afford it, and how tutoring can help classroom teachers to achieve better outcomes for their pupils.


W


hen I started tutoring I had no idea that I would be doing it more than a


Mark Maclaine


few months, let alone 17 years. I had no training, and yet here I was expected to know what to do. My mother had been a teacher in an inner city London school and gave me the best advice she could at the time. “Go and do the best you can. You know your subject; just make sure that when you’ve explained it you check they really did get it. If not, find another way to explain it.” As I was growing up my mother often remarked that she wished she’d had


a little more one-on-one time with each of her students. She felt that even 15 minutes at that moment where they started to fall behind could have prevented them falling so far that it would be hard to bring them back up to speed. Very rarely did she actually get to have this time with students, but when she did, it was often very useful. Three years ago I co-founded the company called Tutorfair.com, we


promise that for every student who pays we give free tutoring to students and schools, who needed it but couldn’t afford it. The Tutorfair Foundation has now grown considerably, and is something we are immensely proud of. The number of children helped has reached 3,000 and the target is 5,000 by the end of this year. Part of the Foundation’s work is to provide training for tutors. We run a


one-day course with some of our friends at TeachFirst, who have been invaluable in their support. One of the areas that interested me most is


26 www.education-today.co.uk


defining what it meant to be a tutor. The answer, perhaps informed by the experiences of my own mother, appeared to me as simple. Tutors are there to support teachers. One of my good friends is both a teacher and a tutor. Over coffee she told


me about what it’s like working as both. One student in her class recently asked her “Miss, do you have a degree?” She responded that she did, and asked why. The student replied, “my tutor has one, and he asked me to check if you did.” Another time a student told her flatly that he didn’t need to learn something because he’d already covered it with his tutor. The student then promptly failed that section of the next test. “Being a teacher has shown me that tutors, far from being helpful, can


sometimes be a real hindrance” she tells me. “Many of my colleagues got into teaching to actually help kids, and sometimes you feel like someone hiring a tutor is some kind of reflection on you not doing your job.” Her insight helped us a great deal in developing training for tutors. The ever-increasing gap between rich and poor is part of why we chose to


set up the Tutorfair Foundation. Funded by a proportion of the money generated from the Tutorfair website, much of our work has been to try help teachers directly. Through a number of programs the Foundation has been training volunteer tutors and placing them directly into schools. Some of these volunteers have other jobs, including many professional tutors, who want to give something back. By paying school coordinators, the Foundation places dedicated members of staff who are “feet on the ground”, working with teachers to help them provide tutoring and mentoring to students who need it the most. When we started developing the idea for tutoring interventions to work


alongside class teachers, I went into a couple of schools that were trialing such programs. My main concern was whether we’d actually be helping or just getting in the way. Most teachers, like my mum, are overworked and underpaid. Adding extra work for them to do seemed to defeat the point. My first group of students were handpicked by their teacher, who chose some of the more disruptive students, he felt might benefit most from some extra help.


July 2015


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