Category: Tutoring Advice

The online tutoring market has exploded in the last few years — which is great for families who need flexibility, but it also means quality varies enormously. Here’s what actually matters when choosing an online English tutor for your child.

1. They Know the Specific Exam Your Child Is Sitting

“Qualified English teacher” doesn’t automatically mean “knows IGCSE Cambridge Paper 2 inside out.” A great general teacher might not know the specific demands, mark schemes, and common pitfalls of your child’s particular exam. Ask: have they taught this exam before? Do they know the mark scheme? Have they seen the examiner reports?

This matters especially for IGCSE (Cambridge vs Edexcel are different), A-Level (AQA vs OCR vs Edexcel have different coursework requirements), and 11+ (GL vs CEM are significantly different).

2. They Have Examiner Experience (or Have Worked Closely With Examiners)

Tutors who have marked exam papers — or who have been trained directly by examiners — understand something that other tutors don’t: what a B answer looks like versus an A answer, and exactly why. This knowledge completely changes the quality of feedback a student receives. It’s the difference between “this is good, but it could be better” and “you need to develop your third point because you’re restating the evidence rather than analysing it.”

3. They Keep Groups Small — or Offer Genuinely Interactive One-to-One

Online group sessions with 15, 20, or more students are essentially lectures. The child watches. They may or may not listen. They almost certainly don’t receive personalised feedback or feel confident to ask questions. Look for group sizes of 6 or fewer — or, if it’s one-to-one, make sure sessions are genuinely interactive (not the tutor talking at a screen while the student silently takes notes).

4. They Provide Feedback on Written Work

English is a writing subject. Your child needs to practise writing — and they need detailed, specific feedback on what they’ve written. A tutor who only covers theory in sessions, without assigning and marking practice essays, is only doing half the job. Ask prospective tutors: how do you handle written work? How quickly do you turnaround feedback? Is it written feedback or verbal?

5. They Have a Clear Structure — Not Just “We’ll See How It Goes”

Good tutoring follows a plan. A structured curriculum — even if it’s adapted flexibly based on the student’s needs — means the student makes systematic progress rather than dipping in and out of topics randomly. Before committing to a tutor, ask: what will we cover? In what order? How will we know if my child is improving?

6. Your Child Feels Comfortable With Them

This one sounds obvious, but it’s genuinely the most important factor after subject expertise. A student who feels too intimidated to admit they don’t understand something, or who feels bored or talked down to, will not make progress — no matter how qualified the tutor is. A trial lesson is invaluable for this reason. Trust your child’s instinct about whether the relationship feels right.

A Word on Price

Tutoring rates for experienced, qualified teachers range widely. The cheapest option is rarely the best value — especially for high-stakes exams. That said, well-structured group tuition can offer excellent quality at a lower price point than one-to-one, provided the groups are genuinely small and interactive. It’s worth exploring both options.

Thorogood English is a small-group online English tuition service led by a qualified teacher and former examiner. Classes open in January 2027. Register your interest here.

Writing reluctance is more common than most parents expect. Plenty of capable, intelligent children resist writing — and the resistance isn’t laziness or a lack of ability. It usually has a specific cause, and once you understand what’s behind it, you can address it much more effectively than by simply insisting they write more.

What’s Usually Behind Writing Reluctance

The gap between thinking and producing: Many children have rich, complex thoughts but find the physical or cognitive act of getting them onto the page exhausting. The gap between what they want to say and what comes out feels humiliating. This is especially common in children who are verbally articulate — they know how good their ideas are, and the written version feels like a disappointment.

Fear of getting it wrong: Children who’ve received a lot of corrections on their writing can develop an association between writing and criticism. The safest strategy, from their perspective, is to write as little as possible — fewer words means fewer mistakes.

Perfectionism: Related to the above — some children can’t write because they can’t bear to write badly. They’ll sit in front of a blank page for twenty minutes because no first sentence feels good enough. These children aren’t lazy; they’re paralysed.

Physical difficulty: For some children, especially those with dysgraphia or motor difficulties, the physical act of writing is genuinely effortful. This can be hard for parents and teachers to identify because the child appears reluctant when they’re actually exhausted.

What Helps

Separate drafting from editing: Many children confuse the first draft with the final version and apply editing standards to drafting. Help them understand that a first draft is supposed to be imperfect — the goal is to get ideas down, not to write perfectly. Some children find it helpful to write their first draft in pencil specifically so it “doesn’t count yet”.

Talk before writing: Ask them to tell you what they want to write before they write it. The act of saying it aloud often unlocks the written version — they’ve already worked out what they want to say. Then the writing is just recording rather than thinking and writing simultaneously.

Reduce the length expectation: Start with one excellent sentence. Then two. Small successes build confidence. A child who’s been asked to write a paragraph and has written three words has failed; a child who’s been asked to write one sentence and has written three has succeeded.

Write for real purposes: Writing a shopping list, a birthday card message, a text to a grandparent — writing that has a real audience and purpose feels different from writing done purely for assessment. Real-world writing reduces self-consciousness.

Thorogood English works with students at all confidence levels — including those who’ve struggled with writing and need to rebuild their relationship with it from the ground up. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

Finding a good English tutor takes more thought than it might seem. Unlike maths, where a tutor either knows how to solve a problem or doesn’t, English teaching involves a complex blend of subject knowledge, communication skill, pedagogical judgment, and the ability to read individual students. Here are seven things that separate excellent English tutors from average ones.

1. They Give Specific Feedback

Vague feedback (“this is good, but try to develop your ideas more”) is almost useless. A good English tutor gives feedback that is precise, actionable, and explained: “This sentence is doing two things at once — the analysis of the imagery and the point about character development are separate ideas and both deserve their own sentence. Here’s how you could separate them…” That’s feedback a student can act on.

2. They Understand the Exam They’re Preparing Students For

IGCSE, GCSE, A-Level, 11+ — these are different qualifications with different assessment criteria, mark schemes, and question types. A tutor who has read the mark scheme, knows the assessment objectives, and understands what specifically earns marks will prepare students far more effectively than one who teaches “English” generically.

3. They Ask More Than They Tell

The best tutors spend more time asking questions than giving answers. “What do you think this word suggests?” “Why might the writer have chosen this structure?” “What’s the difference between what the character says and what they mean?” A student who is prompted to think and articulate will develop skills; a student who is talked at will develop dependence.

4. They Read — and Love — Literature

A tutor who reads widely and genuinely loves language brings something to English teaching that no amount of technique can replicate. Students notice when a teacher is authentically excited by a poem or novel, and that enthusiasm is contagious. Passion for the subject is not sufficient for good teaching, but its absence is a genuine limitation.

5. They Adapt to the Individual Student

No two students have the same weaknesses. A good tutor diagnoses what a specific student needs rather than delivering a fixed programme to every student regardless of where they are. In a small group, this means being attentive to each student’s individual development even while working collectively.

6. They Are Qualified to Teach

A degree in English is valuable but not sufficient. Teaching — especially at IGCSE and A-Level — requires pedagogical knowledge alongside subject knowledge. A tutor who has trained as a teacher, worked in schools, and been assessed on their teaching practice brings a level of professional preparation that is worth looking for.

7. They Communicate Clearly with Parents

A good tutor keeps parents informed — not just “the session went well” but what was covered, what the student found difficult, what progress has been made, and what to practise before next time. This keeps the whole team (tutor, parent, student) aligned and makes the tutoring far more effective.

Jacqueline at Thorogood English is a qualified teacher with examiner experience — she knows the mark scheme, teaches to each student’s individual needs, and communicates clearly with families throughout. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

Some degree of nervousness before an exam is normal and even helpful — it sharpens attention and increases motivation. But for a significant number of students, anxiety goes beyond useful alertness into something that genuinely interferes with performance. Here’s what helps.

Understand What Anxiety Is Doing

Exam anxiety is a stress response — the body preparing itself for a perceived threat. The problem is that the physical symptoms of stress (racing heart, tight chest, difficulty concentrating, blank-mindedness) are not useful in an exam, where calm and focused thinking is what’s needed. The goal of anxiety management is not to eliminate feeling nervous, but to prevent it from taking over.

Preparation Is the Most Reliable Anxiety Reducer

The most effective long-term strategy for exam anxiety is thorough preparation — not because confident students don’t get nervous, but because a student who has practised under timed conditions multiple times has a felt sense of what the exam is like. The unknown is more anxiety-provoking than the familiar. Timed practice demystifies the exam experience and builds the procedural confidence that allows students to begin writing quickly rather than freezing.

Before the Exam

• Sleep: The night before an exam, sleep matters more than last-minute revision. A tired brain performs worse on every dimension that English exams test — reading comprehension, verbal fluency, recall of texts, quality of written expression.
• Avoid comparing with others: Conversations in the corridor before an exam about who has revised what, who feels confident, who feels terrified, are almost always unhelpful. Encourage your child to avoid them.
• A brief physical routine: Even five minutes of movement before entering the exam room can reduce cortisol and improve focus. A short walk, some slow breathing, shaking out hands — whatever feels natural.

During the Exam

If you go blank: Don’t panic — blank-mindedness in exams is almost always temporary. Put the pen down, take three slow breaths, and re-read the question. The answer is nearly always there; anxiety is blocking access to it. Slow breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system and genuinely helps.

Start with what you know: If one question feels harder than another, do the easier one first. Getting words on paper reduces anxiety — the blank page is the most stressful part of any English exam.

Don’t watch other people writing: Someone who appears to be writing confidently and quickly may be writing badly. Focus on your own paper.

For Parents

The most anxiety-inducing thing a parent can do is communicate — even inadvertently — that a great deal rides on this exam. Children are very sensitive to parental anxiety, and parents who are visibly worried about results communicate that worry to their children even when they don’t intend to. Calm confidence, expressed without minimising the importance of the exam, is more helpful than either excessive pressure or dismissive reassurance.

Thorogood English’s small group sessions include regular timed practice — because familiarity with the exam format is the most reliable way to reduce the anxiety that comes from the unknown. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

The tutoring market is dominated by one-to-one sessions — private tutors working with individual students for an hour a week. It’s the default assumption: if a child needs help, you find a tutor and book a slot. But the evidence, and the experience of students and teachers who’ve worked in both formats, suggests that small group tutoring often produces better outcomes. Here’s why.

Learning From Peers

In a well-run small group session, students hear how their peers approach problems — different interpretations, different phrasings, different strategies. This exposure to multiple ways of thinking about the same text or question is something one-to-one tutoring simply cannot replicate, because there’s only one student in the room. Hearing a peer say something you didn’t think of, or hearing a peer make the same mistake you’ve been making, is educationally valuable in ways that are hard to engineer in individual sessions.

Discussion Develops Analytical Thinking

English — particularly Literature — is a subject where discussion is genuinely generative. Talking through an interpretation, defending it, being challenged on it, and refining it is how analytical thinking develops. In one-to-one tutoring, the only discussion is between student and tutor — which creates an inherent power imbalance (the tutor knows the answers) that can inhibit genuine exploratory thinking. In a small group, students discuss with each other as well, which develops confidence and articulation differently.

The Social Dynamic Reduces Performance Anxiety

Some students find one-to-one tutoring high-pressure: every question is directed at them, every answer is immediately assessed, there’s nowhere to hide. This can produce a tentative, performance-focused mindset rather than a curious, exploratory one. In a small group, there’s a small social buffer — the student is part of a cohort, not perpetually in the spotlight — which for many students allows more relaxed, more genuine engagement.

More Affordable — So More Consistent

Small group sessions typically cost significantly less per student than one-to-one tuition. This matters because consistency matters enormously in English: a student who attends regular sessions over an extended period will make more progress than one who has intensive sessions sporadically because the cost prohibits regularity. Small group pricing makes regular, sustained tutoring accessible to families for whom weekly one-to-one rates are a stretch.

What to Look For in a Small Group Programme

Not all small groups are equal. The key things: genuinely small (maximum 6 is the threshold above which individual attention becomes difficult to maintain), a teacher who actively manages the group dynamic rather than lecturing at it, and a programme that adapts to the individuals in the group rather than delivering a fixed script to whoever happens to be there.

Thorogood English runs small groups of maximum 6 students — the size at which every student gets individual attention while still benefiting from the group dynamic. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

“I’m just not good at English.” It’s one of the most common things parents hear — and one of the most damaging beliefs a young person can carry into their exams. The good news is that confidence in English is not a fixed trait. It’s built through specific experiences of success, and those experiences can be engineered. Here’s how.

Confidence Comes From Competence, Not Praise

Telling a child they’re good at English doesn’t make them confident — it makes them feel good briefly and then vulnerable the next time they get something wrong. Real confidence comes from genuine ability developed through practice and specific feedback. The goal is to give children real, earned success experiences: things they actually did well, which they can do again.

Start Small and Make Success Concrete

For a child who believes they can’t write, a full essay is an overwhelming task. One paragraph is less overwhelming. One sentence is manageable. Start where success is achievable and make the success explicit: “That sentence is really good — look at the word you chose there.” Specific, earned praise for a specific thing the child did builds more confidence than general reassurance.

Reframe Mistakes as Information

Children who are anxious about English tend to experience mistakes as evidence that they were right all along — proof that they’re not good at it. The reframe that changes this: mistakes are information about what to practise, not judgements about ability. A child who makes the same error repeatedly needs to practise that specific thing; the error is showing you exactly what to work on. This is useful, not shameful.

Show Progress Over Time

Keep a piece of writing from early in the year. Six months later, write about the same topic and compare. The improvement is almost always visible and often striking — and seeing concrete evidence of progress is more persuasive than any amount of verbal encouragement. Children who can see how far they’ve come have a foundation for believing they can continue to improve.

Find What Interests Them

Children who feel they aren’t good at English often mean they aren’t interested in the texts they’re studying or the writing tasks they’re being set. A child who claims to hate writing might write pages about a video game, a football match, or a TV show they love. Starting from genuine interest builds the fluency and habit that transfers to other writing contexts. It’s a legitimate pedagogical strategy, not a shortcut.

Thorogood English works with students at every confidence level — including those who’ve convinced themselves that English isn’t for them. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

Helping a child with English homework is one of the trickier parenting tasks — not because English is hard, but because the temptation to just fix the work yourself is strong, and it’s surprisingly difficult to know where the line is between helping and doing. Here’s how to be genuinely useful.

The Golden Rule: Ask Questions, Don’t Give Answers

The most effective support you can give is asking questions that prompt your child to think rather than providing the answers yourself. “What do you think this word means in this context?” “Why do you think the character does that?” “What are you trying to say in this sentence?” These questions do the same work as direct instruction but leave the thinking — and therefore the learning — with the child.

Read the Work Before Commenting

Before offering any feedback, read the whole piece. The most common parent mistake is commenting on the first paragraph before seeing whether the later paragraphs address the issue. Read everything, identify the one or two most important things to improve, and focus there — not every possible improvement.

Be Specific About What’s Working

Specific praise is as valuable as specific correction. “That sentence is really clear” or “I liked that word you chose there” tells a child what their good instincts look like, so they can repeat them. “This is good” tells them nothing they can act on.

When to Step Back

If a child is genuinely stuck and becoming frustrated, it’s sometimes better to step back entirely than to push through. Suggest they take a break, come back to it, and try again. Forced writing produced under stress is rarely good, and the habit of pushing through frustration is worth building gently rather than by force.

Don’t Edit the Work Yourself

This is the line that’s most often crossed. Editing a child’s essay — even lightly — means the work is no longer theirs, the teacher’s assessment is of your writing rather than your child’s, and your child hasn’t learned what needed improving. If there’s a problem sentence, point it out and ask them to fix it: “This sentence is a bit confusing — can you say it a different way?” Not: rewriting it yourself.

At Thorogood English, every session includes specific, targeted feedback that students can act on themselves — building independence rather than reliance. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

Finding out that your child is falling behind in English can feel alarming — especially if exams are approaching. But a gap in English performance is almost always recoverable with the right support, and identifying the nature of the gap is the first step to closing it. Here’s how to think about it.

First: Identify Where the Gap Actually Is

“Falling behind in English” can mean several very different things. Is it reading comprehension? Writing quality? Vocabulary? Analytical essay skills? Exam technique? Motivation and engagement? The support that helps with each of these is different, and treating them as the same problem leads to generic interventions that don’t land.

Ask the teacher specifically: what is my child doing well, and what specifically needs to improve? A vague “needs to work on their writing” is less useful than “they struggle to structure analytical paragraphs and their quotation analysis is underdeveloped.” The more specific the diagnosis, the more targeted the support can be.

Don’t Wait for the End-of-Year Report

By the time an annual report signals underperformance, several terms of a gap may already exist. If you notice your child struggling with homework, avoiding reading, or expressing frustration about English class, that’s worth investigating sooner rather than later. Early intervention is much easier than crisis management in the term before exams.

Address Confidence Alongside Skills

Children who’ve fallen behind in English often carry a story about themselves — “I’m just not good at English” — that can be as much of an obstacle as the skills gap itself. Any intervention that improves skills without also improving confidence will only partially work. The confidence comes from earned success: small, specific, genuine improvements that the child can see and recognise.

What Doesn’t Help

Putting pressure on without providing support. Making English a source of family conflict. Generic online resources without targeted feedback. And doing the work for them — which masks the gap without closing it. What helps is specific feedback, regular practice, and a gradual rebuilding of confidence through genuine achievement.

What Does Help

A specialist tutor who can identify the specific gap and work on it systematically. Regular reading — any reading, in any genre, but consistent. Writing practice with feedback, even short pieces. And patience — English skills develop more slowly than content knowledge, and the progress is cumulative.

Thorogood English works with students at all levels — including those who’ve fallen behind and need to rebuild both skills and confidence. Join the waiting list for January 2027.