Here's a question for both students and parents to ponder as we approach the GCSE and A-Level exams season...
If you were guaranteed an increase of one examination grade above your current grade, how much would you be willing to pay? £10? £50? £100? £1000? £2000?
Private Tuition - Worth the Money?
The reason I'm asking this is because as a private tutor, my aim is to boost students' achievement by at least one grade. I do this by providing them with the extra support, knowledge, methods and encouragement they need in order to achieve their potential.
Unfortunately, good private tuition is not cheap. Typically, a one hour tutorial from a decent science tutor in the UK will cost around £30-40. Multiply that by twenty lessons (i.e. about six months of coaching coming once a week) and suddenly you're looking at a bill of around £800.
This puts the original question in perspective! What is the value of a GCSE grade?
Future Prospects?
So what does one grade higher mean for a student's future prospects? The difference between achieving a grade D and a grade C at Physics or Science GCSE could be the difference of being accepted at University or not... or hired for that perfect job - or not...
Affordable Physics Tuition
I make my living by helping students of GCSE and A-Level Science and Maths achieve a better grade, and I'm grateful for being able to do something which I enjoy (and which also pays the bills). However, I can appreciate that private tuition can be a major financial outlay for a lot of parents.
So what's the purpose of GCSEPhysicsNinja.com ? I created this website to help make targetted, high quality private education more accessible to students across the UK and internationally, by making it freely available to all.
Postive and Proactive Attitude
Of course, affordability is a big factor, however, the attitude of the student is also vital to any learning process. "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear" (or something like that) is absolutely true. To improve, the student must want to improve. Once that is in place, the 'tutor' could be several things: a personal one-to-one tutor, a tutorial video course, BBC Bitesize, or even YouTube videos.
Seriously Affect Your Future Prospects
The bottom line is that achieving our full potential at school can seriously affect our futures for the better - whether that means being able to experience further education, start a career of our choice, or simply giving us the confidence to believe in ourselves. With one teacher for a class of 20-30 students, schools can only do so much and so it is often the extra learning support outside of school that makes the difference.
So what value would you place on a GCSE grade?