MATHS ADVANCE BLOG

For many parents, hiring a tutor feels like a sensible way to support progress in maths. Extra time, individual attention, and expert guidance all sound unambiguously positive. Yet the impact varies enormously, and the often quoted two-sigma effect of individual tuition is a significant simplification of a more complex reality. 

What is at least as important as the quantity of tuition is how that time is used. A helpful way to think about tutoring is as something that changes what a pupil is able to do during those lessons. From that perspective, the role of a tutor looks quite different depending on the learner. In this post I will focus on tuition for high-attaining learners.

For pupils who are already confident and successful in maths, tutoring is often used to accelerate through the curriculum. In practice, however, this is rarely necessary, and the benefits are often lost due to future lesson time being less productive.

I am fortunate to teach classes significantly above average attainment. These pupils do not require pre-exposure to understand concepts on first explanation: they are capable of hitting the ground running. What if some of these learners have tutors who have already been through this content? In my experience when individuals learn a topic ahead of time it is often the case that the tutor has not secured a comprehensive conceptual understanding. This creates a lack of certainty for the teacher about the level of competence of the learner. There is a risk that the teacher, lacking clear information about the learner’s level of understanding, provides work that is either too easy or too difficult. In the case of high-attaining learners this approach to tuition is frankly lazy and often unproductive. What these tutors should be doing is working behind the teacher, ensuring all details have been understood, and providing opportunities for enrichment and stretch and challenge. This is more difficult to provide, however, so your child receiving such provision is an indicator that your tutor is certainly worth their fee. 

The key point is that for high-attaining learners, the limiting factor is rarely pace: it is depth. These pupils benefit far more from opportunities to explore ideas sideways, make connections, and tackle problems that do not immediately yield to familiar methods. A brief personal note: if you are the parent of an able mathematician it is entirely in your interests to act upon this advice. I developed Maths Advance to challenge able pupils. It is curriculum based so will complement learning in school, but it goes well beyond the predictable demands of the curriculum thus building broader problem skills such as productive perseverance and strategic-thinking. 

There is, however, a caveat. Some pupils are genuinely self-motivated, reflective learners who enjoy independent progression and are able to connect ideas for themselves. In such cases, limited acceleration can be productive, but it works precisely because the pupil, not the tutor, is doing the intellectual work.

For parents of high-attaining learners, it is worth looking beyond visible markers of progress such as speed or curriculum coverage. A more revealing question is whether tutoring is helping a child engage more thoughtfully and confidently in lessons, or simply reducing the intellectual demand placed on them. In many cases, depth rather than acceleration is what sustains both progress and enjoyment in mathematics.