My Home School News!

We cannot stress highly enough the importance of maths, or math, depending whether you come from the UK or the US. Most prospective employers and further education establishments place a high value on the subject. This can mean that a large percentage of parents will seek to supply a maths tutor to their children as a way of supplementing their education in order to ensure good grades. There is now a growing trend in the US and UK to employ tutors from India to assist our children with their maths. Here we examine the concept of outsourcing to Indian tutors and look at the pros and cons.

Understanding the concept

An Indian maths tutor is able to deliver their lesson to a pupil thousands of miles away over a high speed internet connection. The pupil wears a headset to hear the tutor and uses a laptop to carry out activities on a computer screen. Both pupil and tutor have the capacity to control the laptop, so that the tutor can demonstrate when needed.

Pros

Every pupil has their own individual maths tutor. The direct contact means that the pupil has the ability to ask for further information or guidance in the event that they are struggling with a particular topic. As each pupil has their own tutor they are able to receive tuition on specific topics that they may be struggling with. There is strong evidence to suggest that students that rarely take part in class discussions are more likely to converse in a one-on-one situation. Teachers have also found that students that struggle to remain focussed on work during classes perform much better when working on laptops. One final plus is that online tuition of this kind costs around half of what it does to hire a traditional tutor.

Cons

Although there are many pluses offered by this new form of tuition, there are some that believe it has its negative sides. The crux of their argument is based in the belief that children are more likely to learn when they have an emotional connection with their teacher. This kind of relationship is hard to foster over the internet and if you have a different maths tutor each lesson. There is also the issue of whether the child can always fully understand a teacher that has an accent. The final problem lies with the chance that you could encounter difficulties with your internet connection – which could interrupt or totally ruin lessons.