1-to-1 tuition or a coaching class: which suits your child?

What the research says

The Education Endowment Foundation's Teaching and Learning Toolkit, which summarises research on school interventions, estimates that one-to-one tuition can add up to about five months of extra progress over a year, and small group tuition up to about four, when the tuition is high quality and linked to what is taught in class. It also finds that in small groups, smaller is better.

The research is mostly from schools in England, but the lesson is general: what matters is how closely the teaching fits the child, not the label on the class.

What group coaching does well

• A fixed timetable and a full syllabus plan, which suits children who need structure.
• Regular tests and a sense of where your child stands against others.
• Peers working towards the same goal, which motivates some students.
• A lower cost per hour than 1-to-1 teaching.

What 1-to-1 tuition does well

• The pace is your child's: fast through what they know, slow through what they do not.
• Gaps from earlier years can be found and fixed instead of carried forward.
• Quiet children ask the questions they would never ask in a room of thirty.
• Classes follow your child's own school, textbook and exam dates.

What 1-to-1 tuition cannot do

A tutor cannot replace your child's own practice. One or two classes a week help most when your child does the work set between them, and a tutor who ends up doing homework for a child is not helping at all.

It also costs more per hour than a group class, so it works best with a clear goal, such as a set of weak chapters, a board exam or a switch of syllabus, and a check on whether that goal is being met.

Signs your child needs 1-to-1 help

• They attend coaching but test scores are not moving.
• They say they understand in class but cannot do the questions at home.
• The same few chapters go wrong in every test.
• They have changed board or country and the syllabus does not match.
• They have stopped asking questions, or have started dreading the subject.

How to judge it after a month

• Can your child now do the questions that went wrong before, without help?
• Are school test marks in the target chapters moving, even slightly?
• Does your child ask the tutor questions, and look forward to the classes rather than dread them?
• Do you know what was covered and what your child should practise next?

If the answers are mostly no, change something: the goal, the timing or the tutor.

Using both

Some JEE and NEET students keep their coaching for structure and add 1-to-1 classes for the topics the batch moved past too quickly. The tutor works from the coaching modules and test papers, so the two support each other instead of competing for time.

See which suits your child

A single trial class usually makes the difference clear. Ours is a free 30-minute demo. For entrance exam preparation see JEE maths and CBSE Class 12 physics, or browse all classes and boards.