Private tutoring has a difficult reputation amongst parents and adult students. It is either stigmatised as elitist and expensive and therefore inaccessible OR seen as something to hide. Thought to be confined only to the realms of the rich and the famous, many parents can’t even imagine this being a tangible opportunity for them to improve their skills and boost their grades. Other parents who do invest in a great tutor or two for their kids hide this from family and friends. We live in an education culture after all where the individual is praised for their amazing genius and output, and any help, support, coaching or mentoring in this stressful and demanding process is taboo.
And tutoring at university level? Unthinkable and never heard of! Surely, undergrad students are able to seamlessly engage in high level thinking synthesis and write flawless, well structured, analytical academic essays with the skills they gained in secondary school, no? Many of our assessments before we meet students and during our work with them one on one indicate that there is a mismatch between what students learn in secondary education before they are thrown into the murky and intense university waters where ‘academically-referenced’, high level ‘analysis’ is expected with every word, that it can be quite difficult to navigate sometimes and not feel overwhelmed enough to at best procrastinate and at worst drop out. University students are subject to more pressure than imagined, which is why they must be able to access adequate support and coaching from caring and skilled tutors to thrive in what can sometimes be a very stressful and lonely university experience.
This is where Über Tutors come in as we are an education service based in London that has innovated tutoring services by making them more affordable by offering subsidised rates (discounted rates) to parents of lower income and to university students owing debt and/or on loans in today’s commercial education climate. Using our positive ethos and hands-on approach to provide excellent tutoring and mentoring from primary school all the way to postgraduate studies, we have had over 500+ students within the last 3 years in London and internationally. At Über Tutors, we hand select and match university tutors with students to not only tutor but also mentor them in strategic thinking, organisation, and self management to boost their confidence beyond exams and essay preparation.
We are a viable ‘über’ (in case you don’t know, it means super) alternative to the existing ‘super tutors’ charging families anything between £500- £1,000 an hour for teaching Maths and English, as they visit mansions for home tutoring and are whisked away on holidays with the kids to tutor them. Not that there is anything wrong with treating your tutor to a little holiday but the problem arises when it creates a stigmatised and elitist image of quality tutoring. And university students, being taught ‘to do things on their own’, and not needing help, do not even think of regular tutoring and mentoring as an option to work on their weakness, strengthen their strengths, get super grades and succeed!