How to Choose a Tutor — and What Tutoring Should Cost

Choosing a tutor can feel surprisingly hard. There's no shortage of options, the quality varies enormously, and it's not always obvious what you're paying for. This guide is written to help you decide well — whether or not you end up working with us.

What actually makes a good tutor

Qualifications and subject knowledge matter, but they're the baseline, not the differentiator. Almost any tutor you'll consider knows the material. What separates a tutor who changes a grade from one who simply fills an hour is the relationship — whether the tutor and student are genuinely invested in the same outcome. A student who trusts their tutor, feels safe making mistakes, and actually wants to turn up will always progress faster than one being talked at.

So when you're assessing a tutor, look past the CV and ask: will my child connect with this person? Do they explain things in a way that builds confidence rather than anxiety? Are they interested in my child specifically, or delivering the same lesson to everyone?

Questions worth asking

• Do you teach to my child's specific exam board, and work from past papers and mark schemes?
• How do you keep me informed about progress?
• Are you DBS checked?
• What happens in a first lesson, and is there any lock-in?
• How do you handle a student who's lost confidence in the subject?

Online or in person?

Online tutoring over Zoom has closed almost all of the old gap with in-person lessons — shared screens, digital whiteboards and instant resources often make it better for many subjects. It also removes travel, widens your choice of tutor beyond your postcode, and tends to be easier to schedule around a busy family. For most GCSE and A-Level work, we think one-to-one online is the sweet spot of quality and convenience.

How much should tutoring cost?

Private tutoring in the UK generally ranges from around £25 to well over £80 an hour, depending on the tutor's experience, the subject, the level, and where you are. Very cheap tutoring usually means an inexperienced tutor or one cutting corners on preparation. At the top end, you're often paying for an agency's overheads and brand as much as the teaching itself.

The useful question isn't "what's the cheapest?" but "what am I actually paying for?" A good hourly rate should reflect the whole service — not just the sixty minutes your child is on the call.

How we set our pricing

We charge £45 an hour, or £115 for a first bundle of three lessons. We've set it there deliberately, and we're happy to be transparent about why.

You're paying for the whole process, not just the hour

A lesson is the visible part of a much larger job. Before and after each session we prepare around your child's specific exam board, build or adapt resources, review where they got stuck, and plan where to go next. We think about everything — the sequencing of topics, the questions most likely to trip them up, the small technique points that quietly cost marks. That work outside the lesson is a real part of what you're paying for, and it's what makes the hour itself count.

Quality over volume

We could charge less by preparing less, taking on more students than we can properly serve, or treating tutoring as a conveyor belt. We've chosen not to. Our rate lets us keep numbers manageable and give each student genuine attention — including the monthly parent check-ins and student feedback that keep everyone invested.

A small margin, reinvested

A modest margin above our costs isn't a luxury — it's what lets the service keep improving: better resources, better systems, and the time to do things properly rather than just cheaply. We'd rather be sustainable and good than the cheapest option that cuts corners to survive.

Pastoral care means being selective

The relationship and pastoral side of what we do only works if the people delivering it are the right people. That means being genuinely selective about who tutors under our name — which is a deliberate constraint on how fast we grow, and part of what the price protects. We'd rather stay small and trusted than scale by lowering the bar.

Getting the most from tutoring

Whoever you choose, a few things help: be clear about the goal and timeline, share the exam board and any recent marks, and keep a light line of communication open with the tutor. Tutoring works best as a partnership between tutor, student and parent — which is exactly the model we're built around.