The assumption runs deep: if you want the best results, you hire a private tutor and pay for one-to-one sessions. One adult, one child, total focus. What could be better?
Quite a lot, as it turns out — particularly for English. Here’s why small group teaching often outperforms individual tuition, both academically and in terms of value for money.
Discussion Is Central to English
Mathematics can be learned in solitude. You work through problems, you apply techniques, you get answers right or wrong. English doesn’t work like that. Interpretation is inherently social — the meaning of a poem, the motivation of a character, the effect of a writer’s choice of language — these ideas sharpen and deepen through discussion with other people.
In a one-to-one session, the only perspective available to the student is their own and the tutor’s. In a small group, a student encounters four or five other readings of the same passage. That process of comparison — “Oh, I hadn’t thought of it that way. But actually, doesn’t the word ‘bitter’ suggest…” — is itself an advanced analytical skill that IGCSE and A-Level examiners reward.
Peer Learning Builds Confidence
Many students are more inhibited in front of a tutor — someone older, more qualified, whose response to their ideas feels weighted with judgment — than they are among peers. A student who sits in nervous silence during a one-to-one session will often surprise themselves in a small group, where the dynamic feels more like a conversation between equals.
This matters enormously for writing. Students who won’t take creative risks in their essays because they’re afraid of getting it wrong often loosen up when they see peers attempting the same risks and being praised for them. Risk-taking in writing — unexpected structure, unusual perspective, distinctive voice — is exactly what gets the top marks.
The Tutor Can See the Range
A good tutor teaching a group of six knows instantly when three students have understood an idea and two haven’t — because you can read the room. That information is diagnostic: who needs this explained differently? Who has a misconception that might be shared by others?
In a one-to-one setting, a student who has quietly misunderstood something can go weeks before the misunderstanding surfaces. In a group, it surfaces faster — because the contrast between students who understand and students who don’t is visible and immediate.
Timed Practice Feels Like Real Conditions
IGCSE and A-Level English are timed exams. Practising under time pressure, with other people in the room doing the same thing, replicates exam conditions in a way that sitting at home alone simply doesn’t. The mild tension of knowing others are writing alongside you is, counterintuitively, useful preparation. Students who are unaccustomed to that feeling often find it distracting when it actually matters.
When One-to-One Really Is Better
One-to-one tutoring makes most sense in specific circumstances: a student who needs significant remedial support that would slow down a group, a student with very particular learning needs, or a student who has a specific exam in two weeks and needs intensive, targeted drilling on one area.
For students at a roughly similar level preparing for the same exam over a period of months, a small group taught well will generally outperform individual tutoring — while costing significantly less per session.
The Key Word Is “Small”
None of this applies to large groups. A class of twelve students isn’t small — it’s a class. The benefits described above depend on a group small enough that the tutor knows every student’s work, every student’s specific weaknesses, and every student’s name without having to check a register. That means six students at most. Ideally four or five.
All Thorogood English groups are capped at six students — the maximum at which personalised teaching remains genuinely personal. Join the waiting list for January 2027 to secure a place for your child.