How To Deliver Group Classes

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” - Confucius

Providing academic support, group classes, or private tutorials requires a lot of knowledge and without private tutors, a lot of students would struggle at school. The tutoring market in the UK is valued at £2bn a year and over 40% of students in London have enlisted the help of a private tutor. Tutoring is a great way to make ends meet and help students with their education. Here’s our take on teaching groups with private tutorials!

The Advantages of Teaching Private Group Tutorials

For students who want to take private group tutorials, there are plenty of academic support options available to them and plenty of advantages to teaching private tutorials.

They could go to traditional tutoring agencies, for example, or they could go to tutoring networks and platforms like Superprof, etc. Finally, they could also look at classifieds in local businesses, newspapers, and online via social media. What are the advantages of teaching private group tutorials? For one, the students can learn from one another. Generally, group private tutorials rarely have more than ten students in them as students benefit more from having smaller class sizes than they would in school. Similarly, in a language class or a music theory tutorial, students benefit a lot from a productive and positive working and study environment. Group classes are organised according to the student’s level and allow the tutor to tailor to the students. Of course, you can still teach a variety of students at different levels but you’ll need to be really adaptable. Group classes are useful for developing the social bonds between the students. Furthermore, group classes such as intensive classes, school holiday tutorials, catchup classes, etc. tend to be more intensive than the students’ regular classes. On the other hand, group classes aren’t particularly viable for certain subjects. This is particularly the case with music as students can’t really learn the guitar, drums, or violin, for example, at the same time as others without slowing everybody down. Group classes also cost each family less. The bigger the group, the less the price for each student can be. On the other hand, the tutor can increase their earnings as they’ll earn more money per hour of tutorials. In maths, English, or physics tutorials, for example, it’s easier for the tutor as they’ll only have to prepare one tutorial for 10 students rather than preparing 10 tutorials for 10 individuals. When it comes to learning languages, group classes are useful for getting students to work together and learn from one another in a way that they rarely get to in their normal classes at school. Find online tutoring jobs UK on Superprof.

How Do You Plan Group Private Tutorials?

Now that many of our tutors are offering private group tutorials for subjects like maths, Spanish, German, physics, etc, how do they plan and organise them?

An increasing number of parents are choosing to get private tutorials for their children. If you want to help students with a particular topic, revise for an exam, or work on a presentation in a foreign language, etc., you’ll need to know exactly how to organise an effective group class. Here are 5 key ways to organise your private group tutorials:

• Prepare a review of the previous tutorial
• Elaborate on the key concepts (elicit definitions, examples, create mind maps, etc.)
• Prepare a list of exercises (maths problems, vocabulary lists, conversation topics for conversation classes, etc.)
• Dedicate part of the class to teaching theory.
• Create a list of questions designed to test the students’ understanding of the topics covered.

At the end of each session, tutors can bridge the gap to the next lesson and establish the topics that students will be covering in the next session. This is particularly useful for social sciences, humanities, and language classes. The tutor will also require materials such as tables, chairs, dictionaries (for languages), textbooks, a computer, a projector, etc. Their classroom should be clean, calm, well-lit, and the tutor should be well-presented. Finally, the class needs to be delivered in a clear and progressive way since most students are getting private tutorials because they’re struggling at school or failing exams. This means that you’ll need to get their attention, build up their confidence, and give them a thirst for learning. In order to do all this, you’ll have to put your heart and soul into your lessons. You need to engage them in discussion and show them that they’re capable of illustrating an idea and learning new concepts, etc. In a group class, especially with secondary school students, it’s important to regularly test the new skills they’re learning, let them learn from one another by working together and correcting one another, eliciting answers from one another, and getting the most out of learning with their peers. There are plenty of different teaching approaches available to tutors planning group classes, too.

Where Can You Teach Private Group Tutorials?

So where should you have each lesson? Where can all the students go? Can you teach each subject in the same place?

The bigger the city, the more places you’ll have where you can teach private group tutorials. However, students will probably have to travel more and have less free time. Firstly, not every group class can be taught in the tutor’s home. There’s no reason that private tutors can’t offer private group tutorials. However, sometimes families are unwilling to send their child to a group class with strangers. If you’re teaching sport, yoga, or fitness classes, tutors can teach their students in the park, at the beach, in the forest, or in a field, etc. There are plenty of unusual places where they can offer private group tutorials. That said, academic subjects are usually taught indoors. Here are some examples of where you can teach each subject:

• Sports tutorials: outdoors, at the beach, in the park etc.
• Maths: in classrooms
• English, foreign languages such as French, Russian, Spanish, etc.: in classrooms or outdoors for speaking classes.
• Music, singing, etc.: concert hall, music room, etc.
• Swimming: the local swimming pool, of course
• Biology: classroom, nature reserve, forest, beach, etc.

Since there are multiple students, you can always mix things up if they are progressing as anticipated. Can you teach French in the pub? Probably not if you have four underage students. In this case, it’s probably better to go to the library. Certain libraries actually have private rooms for people to work together where you won’t have to whisper.

How Much Should You Charge for Private Group Tutorials?

How much should families pay and how much should the tutor earn?

It’s difficult to apply a single rate to all the different types of private group tutorials. Private tutoring is a free market and rates will vary according to a huge number of different factors (the tutor’s experience, qualifications, where they teach, the subject they teach, etc.). Generally, private tutorials can cost upwards of £15 per hour but a tutor needs to ensure that they’re earning a living. In recent years, the number of students getting private tutorials has increased. Similarly, the number of tutors has also increased. It’s a dynamic market that continues to grow. As a result, it's a promising market to be involved in. Generally, the average rates sit between £15 and £30 per hour. The main criteria to consider when deciding upon rates are:

• The tutor’s experience
• Their qualifications
• Travel costs
• The student’s level
• What the tutor thinks their lessons are worth

Imagine you charged £30 per hour. If you had 10 students, you’d make £300 per hour. If you did this every week of the year, you’d make over £15k per year. Of course, not many families would be happy to pay £1,500 per year in private tutorials. More often than not, the more lessons a student has and the more students in their lesson, the less they’ll pay per lesson. For example, £300 per student for 30-35 lessons with 5 students, £270 for classes of 8, £230 for 9, £200 for 10, etc. Let’s imagine that a tutor gets £1,440 for a class, £120 a month, £30 an hour. If they work 18 hours a week, they’ll get around £2,160 a month. Of course, that means they’ll need to find 18 hours of private group tutorials, which means they need to find 18 groups of multiple students, which is a lot. A tutor’s earnings depend on what they can earn and what families are prepared to pay for them, which means it can be really difficult to please everyone. Whether you want to offer online tutoring services, one on one tutoring, or group tutorials, students can find a tutor on Superprof. It doesn't matter if you're a mathematics tutor teaching calculus or geometry, a chemistry tutor, offering academic tutoring services such as homework help, or even looking to teach yoga, mindfulness meditation, you can create your profile on Superprof and start building your reputation right now. A qualified online tutor, for example, can help students with exam prep, complete an algebra assignment, or improve their grammar over the internet with online video conferencing programmes like Skype. If you tutor online, you'll have fewer outgoings than tutors who have to travel to their student's home. Of course, there's nothing to stop a good educator from offering both types of instruction helping their students achieve academic success.