Teenager home tutorage costs
Discussion
I quizzed my 13yr old daughter on her French today. She’s supposedly in the middle set and doing well, but her basic grasp of French is woeful. She didn’t even know what ‘de’ ‘du’ ‘le / la’ ‘et’ and ‘est’ etc meant.
At Junior School she won county maths competitions. No she’s in real danger of slipping into the bottom set with the kids with serious learning disabilities.
Rewarding her doesn’t work. Punishing her doesn’t work, and if she was a boy, I’d have probably given her a proper pasting by now.
So all that really remains is to go down the route of working extra hours to pay for private tutorage.
For those that have experience of such matters, what do you look for in private tutors and how much am I likely to get fleeced for per week for 2x maths and 2x French sessions?
Cheers in advance
An exasperated and frustrated 105.4
At Junior School she won county maths competitions. No she’s in real danger of slipping into the bottom set with the kids with serious learning disabilities.
Rewarding her doesn’t work. Punishing her doesn’t work, and if she was a boy, I’d have probably given her a proper pasting by now.
So all that really remains is to go down the route of working extra hours to pay for private tutorage.
For those that have experience of such matters, what do you look for in private tutors and how much am I likely to get fleeced for per week for 2x maths and 2x French sessions?
Cheers in advance
An exasperated and frustrated 105.4
Maths I was ok at. French I can understand roughly. Still get the le la de et mixed up. Never understood how a table can be female type thing.
What does Miss 15.4 want to do with her life.
Is A level french going to help her?
Is A level maths going to help her?
Ask these questions before pissing away mobey on tutors.
What does Miss 15.4 want to do with her life.
Is A level french going to help her?
Is A level maths going to help her?
Ask these questions before pissing away mobey on tutors.
We use mytutor.co.uk for A level physics. One hour per week; £51 a pop. Not sure if it's worth it if your child doesn't like the subject. We did the same for both younger children for GCSE maths and despite both of them being largely hopeless at maths they both got an A. But A level is a different league altogether.
105.4 said:
I quizzed my 13yr old daughter on her French today. She’s supposedly in the middle set and doing well, but her basic grasp of French is woeful. She didn’t even know what ‘de’ ‘du’ ‘le / la’ ‘et’ and ‘est’ etc meant.
At Junior School she won county maths competitions. No she’s in real danger of slipping into the bottom set with the kids with serious learning disabilities.
Rewarding her doesn’t work. Punishing her doesn’t work, and if she was a boy, I’d have probably given her a proper pasting by now.
So all that really remains is to go down the route of working extra hours to pay for private tutorage.
For those that have experience of such matters, what do you look for in private tutors and how much am I likely to get fleeced for per week for 2x maths and 2x French sessions?
Cheers in advance
An exasperated and frustrated 105.4
You shouldn't look for private tutors, you should look for social services as you are unfit to be a parent. Poor girl.At Junior School she won county maths competitions. No she’s in real danger of slipping into the bottom set with the kids with serious learning disabilities.
Rewarding her doesn’t work. Punishing her doesn’t work, and if she was a boy, I’d have probably given her a proper pasting by now.
So all that really remains is to go down the route of working extra hours to pay for private tutorage.
For those that have experience of such matters, what do you look for in private tutors and how much am I likely to get fleeced for per week for 2x maths and 2x French sessions?
Cheers in advance
An exasperated and frustrated 105.4
How they teach French at school is beyond me. They have the kids for 2 hours a week for 9 years and in the run up to the GCSE it is shocking how little they know for all the cumulative hours of teaching they’ve done. This is a private school btw. It seems to be something about how French is taught because my oldest daughter switched to Spanish for GCSE for just 4 years and got an A* with 98%.
We asked around and got a personal recommendation for a French tutor for our son and he only had about 8 lessons but he said it really helped and probably elevated him a grade (he got a 7).
Youngest daughter is just doing GCSEs now, she’s had the same tutor for an hour a week for the last year or so, the improvement it has made is staggering and I wouldn’t be surprised if she got a 9 now but would have got maybe a 6 otherwise.
We are paying £45 for the hour in Surrey, it’s a mixture of in person and online.
With the maths I can guarantee it is about practice. I have helped all my children with maths and you have to spend some time explaining the techniques but the biggest improvement in scores for GCSE comes from doing past papers AND then working through the marking scheme to show them where marks can be picked up for doing some of the working out even if you didn’t get the answer. My youngest daughter is no maths genius but she’ll get an 8 or 9 just by picking up enough marks across the paper. The first half of the GCSE is so easy you can bank about 50% of the marks with very little knowledge or application. Threshold for an 8 is about 65% and a 9 about 75% so if you can accumulate scraps over the harder questions a high grade is attainable - you do not need to be a maths whizz.
We’re also paying about £45 for an online tutor for a couple of sciences which has helped. Surrey prices.
My youngest daughter is massively disengaged with school - she’s been diagnosed neurodiverse in the last year - but she has responded very well to the tutoring.
To find a tutor I sugggest you ask around other parents and get a recommendation. You may be surprised at how many have used one.
We asked around and got a personal recommendation for a French tutor for our son and he only had about 8 lessons but he said it really helped and probably elevated him a grade (he got a 7).
Youngest daughter is just doing GCSEs now, she’s had the same tutor for an hour a week for the last year or so, the improvement it has made is staggering and I wouldn’t be surprised if she got a 9 now but would have got maybe a 6 otherwise.
We are paying £45 for the hour in Surrey, it’s a mixture of in person and online.
With the maths I can guarantee it is about practice. I have helped all my children with maths and you have to spend some time explaining the techniques but the biggest improvement in scores for GCSE comes from doing past papers AND then working through the marking scheme to show them where marks can be picked up for doing some of the working out even if you didn’t get the answer. My youngest daughter is no maths genius but she’ll get an 8 or 9 just by picking up enough marks across the paper. The first half of the GCSE is so easy you can bank about 50% of the marks with very little knowledge or application. Threshold for an 8 is about 65% and a 9 about 75% so if you can accumulate scraps over the harder questions a high grade is attainable - you do not need to be a maths whizz.
We’re also paying about £45 for an online tutor for a couple of sciences which has helped. Surrey prices.
My youngest daughter is massively disengaged with school - she’s been diagnosed neurodiverse in the last year - but she has responded very well to the tutoring.
To find a tutor I sugggest you ask around other parents and get a recommendation. You may be surprised at how many have used one.
EmailAddress said:
105.4 said:
I quizzed my 13yr old daughter on her French today. She’s supposedly in the middle set and doing well, but her basic grasp of French is woeful. She didn’t even know what ‘de’ ‘du’ ‘le / la’ ‘et’ and ‘est’ etc meant.
At Junior School she won county maths competitions. No she’s in real danger of slipping into the bottom set with the kids with serious learning disabilities.
Rewarding her doesn’t work. Punishing her doesn’t work, and if she was a boy, I’d have probably given her a proper pasting by now.
So all that really remains is to go down the route of working extra hours to pay for private tutorage.
For those that have experience of such matters, what do you look for in private tutors and how much am I likely to get fleeced for per week for 2x maths and 2x French sessions?
Cheers in advance
An exasperated and frustrated 105.4
Just to be clear, you're considering physically abusing your mildly struggling young daughter for her disengagement with two notoriously tricky subjects. One of which, is likely to be dropped within a year or two.At Junior School she won county maths competitions. No she’s in real danger of slipping into the bottom set with the kids with serious learning disabilities.
Rewarding her doesn’t work. Punishing her doesn’t work, and if she was a boy, I’d have probably given her a proper pasting by now.
So all that really remains is to go down the route of working extra hours to pay for private tutorage.
For those that have experience of such matters, what do you look for in private tutors and how much am I likely to get fleeced for per week for 2x maths and 2x French sessions?
Cheers in advance
An exasperated and frustrated 105.4
All because of your inability to structure your parenting beyond carrot or stick?
You thought you'd throw money at the problem but are whining about skill / cost of that. Even though you can't be f
ked yourself to help her.Nice mate.
Have you considered that her age may be a key factor. Is everything okay for her at school?
I don’t know I bother here sometimes, there are so many sanctimonious pricks casting down their judgments from up above.
OP there’s an app called Duolingo. It helps with French and gives rewards and whatnot so probably quite appealing to a teen. Try that.
EmailAddress said:
Just to be clear, you're considering physically abusing your mildly struggling young daughter for her disengagement with two notoriously tricky subjects. One of which, is likely to be dropped within a year or two.
All because of your inability to structure your parenting beyond carrot or stick?
You thought you'd throw money at the problem but are whining about skill / cost of that. Even though you can't be fked yourself to help her.
Nice mate.
Have you considered that her age may be a key factor. Is everything okay for her at school?
No, I wasn’t considering giving her a pasting. But if she was a boy, she’d have had one a long time ago for various reasons that I won’t get into on this thread. But let’s just say that she’d greatly benefit from both a reality check and an adjustment in her attitude and how she treats people.All because of your inability to structure your parenting beyond carrot or stick?
You thought you'd throw money at the problem but are whining about skill / cost of that. Even though you can't be f
ked yourself to help her.Nice mate.
Have you considered that her age may be a key factor. Is everything okay for her at school?
I don’t consider either subject to be tricky. Maths certainly as, (to put it simply), either 2+2=4 or it doesn’t. Latin based languages have rules, and once you understand those rules, it isn’t particularly complicated.
I am a terrible parent, I always have been. I’ll genuinely readily admit that.
It’s not that I can’t be bothered to personally help her. I’d love to be able to, but an easy week at work for me is 80+ hours over seven days, 100+ hours when I’m busy, and that excludes any admin work that I need to do at home. I simply do not have the time. Most of the time I don’t even have the time for any lunch.
When I was just a year older than my daughter I’d left school and I was already working 80+ hours per week. I don’t want my daughter to have my life. I want her to have an easy, comfortable, normal life.
But the issue is either entirely of my own making, or greatly influenced by my actions. Because I have to work so many hours to keep a roof over our heads, I don’t have any time to spend with her, so affection is shown via material objects and by often spoiling her to make up for never being there.
As for everything being ok at school and in her personal life? I honestly couldn’t tell you. She’s the ultimate example of Kevin & Perry. Regardless of the question being asked, all you’ll get is a monosyllabic grunt. She’d certainly hold up well to interrogation !
Which of course brings up another problem. How can you fix an issue if you don’t fully understand what the problem is in the first place?
Anyway, back to work. I’ll check back in later.
105.4 said:
No, I wasn’t considering giving her a pasting. But if she was a boy, she’d have had one a long time ago for various reasons that I won’t get into on this thread. But let’s just say that she’d greatly benefit from both a reality check and an adjustment in her attitude and how she treats people.
I don’t consider either subject to be tricky. Maths certainly as, (to put it simply), either 2+2=4 or it doesn’t. Latin based languages have rules, and once you understand those rules, it isn’t particularly complicated.
I am a terrible parent, I always have been. I’ll genuinely readily admit that.
It’s not that I can’t be bothered to personally help her. I’d love to be able to, but an easy week at work for me is 80+ hours over seven days, 100+ hours when I’m busy, and that excludes any admin work that I need to do at home. I simply do not have the time. Most of the time I don’t even have the time for any lunch.
When I was just a year older than my daughter I’d left school and I was already working 80+ hours per week. I don’t want my daughter to have my life. I want her to have an easy, comfortable, normal life.
But the issue is either entirely of my own making, or greatly influenced by my actions. Because I have to work so many hours to keep a roof over our heads, I don’t have any time to spend with her, so affection is shown via material objects and by often spoiling her to make up for never being there.
As for everything being ok at school and in her personal life? I honestly couldn’t tell you. She’s the ultimate example of Kevin & Perry. Regardless of the question being asked, all you’ll get is a monosyllabic grunt. She’d certainly hold up well to interrogation !
Which of course brings up another problem. How can you fix an issue if you don’t fully understand what the problem is in the first place?
Anyway, back to work. I’ll check back in later.
Perhaps you should consider working less or moving somewhere more affordable, at the moment you have no life with your daughter at all and you are strangers. You don’t have to be a terrible parent, why not try and change and do stuff with your daughter, you only live once so why should you both be miserable?I don’t consider either subject to be tricky. Maths certainly as, (to put it simply), either 2+2=4 or it doesn’t. Latin based languages have rules, and once you understand those rules, it isn’t particularly complicated.
I am a terrible parent, I always have been. I’ll genuinely readily admit that.
It’s not that I can’t be bothered to personally help her. I’d love to be able to, but an easy week at work for me is 80+ hours over seven days, 100+ hours when I’m busy, and that excludes any admin work that I need to do at home. I simply do not have the time. Most of the time I don’t even have the time for any lunch.
When I was just a year older than my daughter I’d left school and I was already working 80+ hours per week. I don’t want my daughter to have my life. I want her to have an easy, comfortable, normal life.
But the issue is either entirely of my own making, or greatly influenced by my actions. Because I have to work so many hours to keep a roof over our heads, I don’t have any time to spend with her, so affection is shown via material objects and by often spoiling her to make up for never being there.
As for everything being ok at school and in her personal life? I honestly couldn’t tell you. She’s the ultimate example of Kevin & Perry. Regardless of the question being asked, all you’ll get is a monosyllabic grunt. She’d certainly hold up well to interrogation !
Which of course brings up another problem. How can you fix an issue if you don’t fully understand what the problem is in the first place?
Anyway, back to work. I’ll check back in later.
Ok I ma not a parent so have no experience beyond once being a child.
Why are you forcing your daughter to achieve? If my parents had done this I would have rebelled and achieved even less. If my parents had forced a tutor on me on top of schooling and homework I would not have taken much notice of the tutor, and their job would have been impossible.
I was fine with maths and science but languages were not easy for me at all, My parents never pushed me, they encouraged and supported but never got uptight if I was not top of the class. I did fine in life and I can't speak French.
My thought is the OP's attitude to his daughters ability is by far the biggest issue here. Not every one can be top of the class.
Why are you forcing your daughter to achieve? If my parents had done this I would have rebelled and achieved even less. If my parents had forced a tutor on me on top of schooling and homework I would not have taken much notice of the tutor, and their job would have been impossible.
I was fine with maths and science but languages were not easy for me at all, My parents never pushed me, they encouraged and supported but never got uptight if I was not top of the class. I did fine in life and I can't speak French.
My thought is the OP's attitude to his daughters ability is by far the biggest issue here. Not every one can be top of the class.
Personally, I would leave her be on the education front but give her strong encouragement and loving support. There are too many parents nowadays pushing their children to attain the goals they, not the children, want to achieve. She’ll find her own way, set her own future with enthusiastic encouragement from her mum and dad.
Answering the question that the OP posed and throwing in a few ideas that will, I hope, be helpful as the parent of 13 and 15 year-old girls.
We have a physics tutor for our eldest as she's struggling with the subject in the run up to GCSE. £60 per hour for a retired head of Physics at a top London day school with a current enhanced DBS cert and a string of references. It's going well. Do really drill into the references and DD - as our daughters' prep school headmistress said in the run-up to CE "Many tutors are working outside mainstream education for very good reasons"
I have come to the conclusion that languages, which have never been taught rigorously in the UK are now taught at 'joke' level. Our daughters are both strong linguists and in the A set for all their languages but what they are taught is more like *insert language* studies than the language itself. Just to get the girls up to a level of general competence in oral and written languages, I have to do a lot of work with them in French and Latin and their mother in German.
What motivates - or de-motivates - teenage girls is conquistador's magic as far as I can see but, based on our experience, don't rule out entirely irrational factors like who else is in their class for the subject/what they think of the teacher etc.
Hope this helps!
We have a physics tutor for our eldest as she's struggling with the subject in the run up to GCSE. £60 per hour for a retired head of Physics at a top London day school with a current enhanced DBS cert and a string of references. It's going well. Do really drill into the references and DD - as our daughters' prep school headmistress said in the run-up to CE "Many tutors are working outside mainstream education for very good reasons"
I have come to the conclusion that languages, which have never been taught rigorously in the UK are now taught at 'joke' level. Our daughters are both strong linguists and in the A set for all their languages but what they are taught is more like *insert language* studies than the language itself. Just to get the girls up to a level of general competence in oral and written languages, I have to do a lot of work with them in French and Latin and their mother in German.
What motivates - or de-motivates - teenage girls is conquistador's magic as far as I can see but, based on our experience, don't rule out entirely irrational factors like who else is in their class for the subject/what they think of the teacher etc.
Hope this helps!
ClaphamGT3 said:
I have come to the conclusion that languages, which have never been taught rigorously in the UK are now taught at 'joke' level. Our daughters are both strong linguists and in the A set for all their languages but what they are taught is more like *insert language* studies than the language itself.
I've never understood the way languages are taught in schools.When you learn your first language, you start off by first learning to talk with just single words, then move on to putting them into sentences. Only then are you taught how to read and write; i.e. after you have mastered talking.
But then at age 11 (for me anyway), they try and teach you to read, write and speak another language all at the same time, in sentences. And in my case, for 4 hours a week, for 3 years. I dropped French as soon as I could, I hated it.
Off topic a bit but what do you do for a living?
If you were doing 80 hours at 14 and are still doing 80/100 hours at your present age then you’re either Elon Musk or you’re in the wrong job.
If you can’t cut down your hours or delegate responsibility then your life will consist of I went to school, I went to work then I died.
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