Parents interviewing a prospective tutor tend to ask about qualifications, rate and availability. All three matter, and none of them predicts whether a child will make progress.
Subject knowledge is necessary and nowhere near sufficient. What separates a tutor who will help from one who will simply be present twice a week is how they answer five questions — so ask these, and listen to the shape of the answers.
One qualification can be checked rather than asked about: the National Teaching Council keeps the register of licensed teachers, and a licence number takes minutes to verify.
Five questions that separate a method from a rate
- “How will you work out what they already know?” A good answer describes finding out where the understanding stops — usually well before the topic the child is currently failing. A weak answer is a plan to start at the current syllabus point and go faster. A student lost in Chapter 7 is very often lost because of something in Chapter 3, and going faster through Chapter 7 widens the gap rather than closing it.
- “What will you do when they get something wrong?” Listen for whether the tutor wants to find out why the answer was wrong. Re-explaining the same method more slowly and more loudly is the most common failure in tutoring, and it is what most struggling students have already had plenty of. A wrong answer is information; a tutor who treats it as an obstacle rather than a clue will not get far.
- “What will I see after a month?” A tutor who can describe a specific kind of question the child will be able to attempt independently has a plan. One who promises a grade jump has a sales pitch. Grades move at the pace of examinations; capability moves weekly, and capability is what you can actually observe.
- “What should we do between sessions?” Two hours a week does not move a grade on its own. The tutor should have a view on the other hundred and sixty-six, even a small one. “Twenty minutes on these five questions before Thursday” is a plan. “Just keep practising” is not.
- “How will you keep me informed?” A parent who hears nothing for a term cannot tell a productive silence from an unproductive one. A short note after each session is enough — and it should describe what was covered and where the student struggled, not confirm attendance. A tutor who can write two honest sentences about a difficulty is a tutor who noticed one.
The same five, side by side:
| Ask | A strong answer | A weak answer |
|---|---|---|
| How will you assess where they are? | Describes diagnosing backwards from the failure | “We will start with the current topic” |
| What do you do with wrong answers? | Finds out why before correcting | “I explain it again” |
| What will a month look like? | A named, observable capability | A promised grade |
| What happens between sessions? | A specific, small task | “Revision” |
| How will we know it is not working? | Suggests a review point | Deflects |
Before the first session — and before you commit
Confirm identity and qualifications before the first session, not after it. Meet in a shared room in the home rather than behind a closed door, and keep it that way; this is normal practice and a good tutor will expect it. A tutor who is uncomfortable with any of that has told you something useful.
You also learn more from the first three sessions than from any interview. Does the student talk, or only listen? Do they attempt things, or watch them being done? Less anxious about the subject afterwards, or more? A tutor doing this well produces a student who tries something without being asked — the earliest reliable signal, and it appears long before a grade does. Put the exit in writing too: what happens if it is not working after a month, how much notice, whether anything is refundable, who decides. Agreeing that while everyone is optimistic is far easier than negotiating it while somebody is disappointed.
The thing that actually predicts progress
Across all of these questions one quality shows up: whether the tutor is curious about this particular student, or delivering a fixed lesson at them. The first kind asks questions in the interview as well as answering them. That is the signal worth hiring on.
