This is a leading question and I am sure one that many parents will have debated over the years. I make no secret of the fact that I am actually a big fan of tutoring and have done this for both of my girls at different points in their education journey.

My reasoning behind this is simple. If I send my daughter to gymnastics classes, she doesn’t expect me to know how to safely or knowledgably do a back hand spring, so why should I be expected convey the best ways to handle quadratic equations. Making sure that my girls have the best possible teachers available to them is both important and much less stressful for me.

So I asked my youngest daughter if she wanted to try some online maths tutoring (with her Year 2 SATS coming up, I thought this would be good practice) and as she is a home bird, this appealed to her. Matr gives primary school-aged children in the UK online one-to-one maths tuition. Their tutors are maths experts trained to teach KS2 national curriculum to 7 to 11 year-olds, so it was a perfect partnership for us.

Prior to the agreed set lessons, children are encouraged to do some “test” sets to establish their ability levels. I don’t think we took full advantage of this as our first lesson was quite basic but this also gave us a chance to get used to the system and how it worked. 

Unfortunately in our case, my daughter didn’t connect well with the tutor and found them difficult to understand during the session however Matr were keen to react to this and swiftly arranged another tutor for our next session.

Because of this initial “blip” I did question with Matr as to how they recruit their tutors and it is interesting to note they have a global network of tutors which enables them to hire maths specialists and provide the best support possible for each child. All tutors are maths specialists by degree or training, and many are STEM graduates … so definitely qualified. 

Our next session had a new tutor who was extremely encouraging and adds little smiley face stickers on the screen when they are rewarding good work. My daughter loved this feature and ended up awarding the tutor some smiley face stickers of her own!

The next question is always cost and as parents we have so much to budget for each month so having an affordable solution is necessary. Matr have easy, affordable, monthly or weekly payments from as low as £9.25 per week. The additional benefit is that you are not tied into a long term agreement and you can cancel anytime.

So I started this post with the title saying “Should I get a tutor for my child” and for me, there are 5 good reasons to!

1. One to One Learning
2. Builds Confidence
3. Test / Exam Revision
4.  You can maintain over the holidays
5. No more homework wars!!

 Maths tuition is no longer just the privilege of the wealthy. Online tuition companies like Matr now make maths fun and affordable for all primary aged kids. 

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