As some of my readers already know, I am the co-founder of Tutorhub, the specialist online tutoring website based in Bristol, UK.

I last posted back in September 2011, about the emerging web businesses starting to focus on the online tutoring market in the UK. Back then there were a few businesses: Home Tutoring Online, Brightspark, Dizeo, Maths Doctor, Exam Fox, Live Tutor and Meteor Online Learning. So in the intervening period, what has changed?

Well quite alot actually. We have some new entrants:

1. Itutormaths, part of Nelson Thornes (along with Bond 11+), specialising in maths and focusing on group learning online
2. Mytutor, part of AQA, focusing on maths and english
3. Tute, which is offering homework help and online tutoring

There have been a number of changes. Exiting from the market are Brightspark, Home Tutoring Online, Dizeo and MyTutor. Whilst Exam Fox are now the Tutor Crowd.

We at Tutorhub have been working hard at working out what customers want and how best to achieve product : market fit. The obvious question, is has anyone else ‘nailed’ the customer proposition, to which the honest answer I think is ‘no’ – this is a classic ‘new product in a new market’.

There are three things that I believe we all have to get over.

1. There is a perception amongst some customers that online tutoring ‘must be’ in some way inferior to traditional face to face tutoring. We have conducted extensive research that demonstrates that this is every bit as effective. We will be expanding on this in due course.

2. The online tutoring technology isn’t particularly appealing to students or tutors, based on generic meeting based third party platforms. There are no compelling product delivery platforms out there at the moment in my opinion, which is why we will be launching a new online tutoring platform soon.

3. Pricing is a barrier. People expect online tutoring to be cheaper than regular face to face tutoring. The Tutorhub platform shows a hourly price range not that dissimilar to face to face tutoring. This does not create a compelling reason to swap from a face to face to an online tutor. Tute’s £5 for 45 minutes online tutoring, is a move in the right direction I think.

So what do I see the next 12 months bringing? I think four things:

1. This is currently an embryonic market place, and I expect to see increased interest and take up. We are further away from a tipping point than I might like, but things are moving in the right direction
2. New business models, clearly focusing on customer needs and expectations – what currently flies in the UK will be different to that which is working in India or the US. Once the offer is proven in the UK, then it can be rolled out internationally
3. Differentiation based on delivering superior levels of customer service
4. More new entrants and more exits

This is an interesting market, which I think will develop and grow. I think that we at Tutorhub have the plan to deliver the most compelling customer offer – watch this space.

Below is the badge we are using on Tutorhub to get tutors to direct traffic from their personal website to their profile on Tutorhub.

Before I launch into my latest research into UK based online tutoring businesses, I should declare that I am a co-founder of the UK based start-up Tutorhub.

I blogged eight months ago, back in December about UK based online tutoring websites and the embryonic nature of the online tutoring marketplace. Since then we have seen three new businesses enter the market:

1. MyTutor, which is interesting as it is owned by AQA exam board
2. Itutormaths, owned by the educational publisher Nelson Thornes
3. Tutorme, of which I must admit to knowing very little

I am repeating my post on the Tutorhub website here, as I think it bears further exposure – maybe some of you will be as annoyed by it as me, who knows….

Students from high attaining comprehensive schools are far less likely to attend top universities than those from independent schools. So say the Sutton Trust in their report ‘Degree of Success’.

Just focusing on Oxbridge entrants, they found that:

“2,000 schools and colleges had two or fewer Oxbridge entrants over the three years… just under two thirds of all schools and colleges, and accounted for 5.6% of Oxbridge admissions over the three years. The total number of Oxbridge entrants from these 2,000 schools and colleges over the three years is less than the number from 4 schools and one college who produced 946 Oxbridge entrants over the period.”

What proportion of these applications are accepted?

“5.2% of independent school pupils were accepted by Oxford and Cambridge, compared with 0.8% of pupils in non selective state schools, and 4.2% in selective state schools.”

Sutton Trust conclude that “independent school pupils are nearly seven times as likely as pupils in comprehensive schools to be accepted into Oxbridge.”

The Times Educational Supplement commenting on wider university acceptance rates included in the report say “there is something terribly wrong when a comprehensive school with the same scores as a local independent sends 17% of it’s pupils to top universities compared to 66% sent by its neighbour.”

But what do we as a nation do to correct this? Surely bright children from poor backgrounds should be given the same chance as kids from more affluent backgrounds? Can we expect much to change anytime soon? My belief is that increasing tuition fees will only serve to reduce state school applications still further, and that without proactive selection procedures at Oxbridge, nothing is likely to change.

Jamila Uddin screamed “I played ping pong with Barack Obama! I can’t believe it!”. Ayo Osisami yelled back “He winked at me!”. His visit to the Globe Academy in South London, with David Cameron really went down well.

Apart from an hour out of the school day, what did his visit bring to the kids at Globe Academy? As a kid from, shall we say, a ‘more challenging’ inner-city comprehensive school, I believe that meeting people that have done something and achieved in their lives is really important. Getting a new perspective, seeing that they are really no different from you, helps raise aspirations and set a new outlook on life.

Did it really have that big an impact on these kids, well it’s over to Tanvir Khan who said “It was the highlight of my life”. Those wanting Barak to visit their school, should form an orderly queue.

Wonder what the kids would have said about their views on the visit of David Cameron – maybe these weren’t printable

Just a quick blog post to let everyone know that Tutorhub was covered today by the Good Web Guide - the definitive guide to the best websites on the internet.

I am pleased with the article. If you would like to read it, just click on this link.

To say that exams are stressful is an understatement – the horror can stay with us for the rest of our lives. I calculate that there are over 6.5m GCSE and A level exams taken every year, this adds up to a whole lot of pain.

So you’ve done as much revision as you meaningfully can. What tips can an examiner give you? Well, these are from George Turnbull, the Exam Doctor.

Before the exam:

• Know when and where your exams are being held.
• Check your equipment, make sure that it is in good working order, and know what is to be provided by your school.
• Check you don’t have two exams at the same time. Special arrangements need to be made.
• Don’t cheat or break any rules. You could be disqualified or even arrested. Mobile phones are a menace and barred from the exam hall. Don’t take one in.
• Have a leisurely breakfast or lunch and walk to school, if possible. Be there in good time.
• Avoid friends outside the exam hall. They could confuse you. Keep your thoughts to yourself and concentrate on the exam. That’s why you are there.

In the exam room:

• Take six deep breaths, ignore everyone else and concentrate solely on what you have to do.
• Have a glucose sweet, to boost energy to your brain – but don’t crunch.
• Read the instructions on the exam papers carefully – do the appropriate number of questions from the right sections, and answer compulsory questions.
• Know how many marks each question carries – don’t spend too long on any one. Use the number of marks on the paper as a guide.
• Read questions carefully before you write anything. Time is allowed for this. Use that time to choose your questions, and write notes on the question paper to help you remember later.
• Make sure you answer the question asked.  No marks if you don’t.
• If you run out of time, more marks can be gained by completing your remaining answers in outline only.  State what you would do and how to do it, by outlining your main arguments in an essay – without writing the essay – and by jotting down formulae in science – stating how you would complete the question – without doing the calculations.

Good advice, I am sure you will agree. After the exam – no post-mortems. Don’t worry about the exam you have just taken – you can’t do anything about it now.  Put the papers in a drawer and look at them again only when your own grandchildren ask to see them. Concentrate instead on the next exam, where you can influence the result.”

Finally, all that is left is to wish you all good luck in your exams.

I don’t know about you, learning doesn’t always come easy to me. I recall taking my mock GCSE exams and staring at my revision, wondering why some kids do really well seemingly without trying, whereas for me it was a battle.

There is a great debate about nature versus nurture. Is academic success due to some special chromosome or is to just down to the way you are taught to learn, and the effort you put in.

An article from Matthew Syed has shed some light on the conundrum. He has found that many studies have found that top performers learn no faster than those who reach lower levels of attainment – hour after hour, they improve at almost identical rates. The difference is simply that high achievers practise for more hours. This was a Eureka moment for me, so it’s about the hard yards – structured and regular studying is the secret.

Syed has found further research which has shown that when students seem to possess a particular gift, it is often because they have been given extra tuition at home, by tutors or parents.

This is not to deny that some kids start out better than others – it is merely to suggest that the starting point we have in life is not particularly relevant.

So many kids, develop a mindset that rationalise poor exam results with a feeling that they are somehow not bright enough. This mindset has a way of becoming self-fulfilling, as it leads to a lowering of expectations.

So with so many kids revising for their summer exams, what words of wisdom can we impart? Well, it is as simple as giving plenty of time for revision, covering the subjects as many times as you feel necessary until you feel that you know the answer. If you don’t understand something, then you can visit Tutorhub for some one to one help online, of course.

Good words of advice, I think. Best of luck kids.

Okay, so maybe not a surprise given the scale and scope of the public sector cuts being planned, that something costing £80m would receive particular attention. But it was with some sadness that read that the Vetting & Barring scheme and the ISA (Independent Safeguarding Authority) would be ‘scaled back’.

Formal confirmation is due in the Freedom Bill, but it seems probable that the ISA is to be merged with the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB). So where does this leave parents, as consumers and tutors?

Parents will be disappointed that there will not be a independent website where they can check tutors online, and that noone will be required to be forever vigilant, constantly updating people’s suitability to work with children, when circumstances change. As I see it the problem with CRB checks is that they only reflect the CRB’s information on an individual at a point in time, whereas an ISA check was a much better control as it was similar to a driving license.

As tutors, maybe you are not concerned either way, as the industry is unregulated and there is no requirement per se for private tutors to be CRB checked in any case. The cost of a CRB check is normally met by employers, and you would expect this not to change with the ISA.

What do I think? Well on one hand I was concerned about the whole subjective review process and power seemingly in the hands of a team of bureaucrats. On the other hand, I think that we may have ‘thrown the baby out with the bathwater’ – does child safety come with a price? Would the ISA have stopped Ian Huntley, if you think like me that it would, then surely we will have got the balance between personal freedom and child safety wrong.