Is the Tutoring Working? Set the Stopping Rule Before You Start

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Quick answers

1. The problem is not measurement. It is that there is nothing to measure against

Families ask whether the tutoring is working six weeks in. By then the honest answer is usually that it cannot be known — not because progress is invisible, but because nobody wrote down the starting point.

🔴 And this is the whole failure, in one sentence: the question is asked at week six and answered from memory, and memory is not neutral once four invoices have been paid. You remember the lesson that went well. You remember the evening he finally understood the topic. You do not remember how long he used to sit before starting a question, or how much prompting he needed in week one, because you were not looking at those things then.

Fifteen minutes in week zero makes the next six months answerable. Skipping it does not save fifteen minutes; it converts every later decision into a guess.

2. Week zero: the five lines

Before the first lesson, sit with one past paper and one practice question and write down, on one sheet with the date on it:

1. The named gap, in his words and yours. Not “weak at maths” — “cannot add fractions with different denominators”. A vague description cannot be shown to have improved.
2. The commonest error type on his last paper. Was he not starting at all, misapplying a rule, or arriving at the wrong arithmetic from the right method? The five types are set out here.
3. How much help he needed to start one question. Full worked example, first step given, a hint, one question, or nothing.
4. Seconds from reading a question to writing a first step. Time it once. It feels pedantic and it is the single most sensitive line on the sheet.
5. Whether he could do it with the wording changed. Same skill, different sentence. Record yes or no.

Then put the sheet away and do not look at it for two weeks.

3. The three decisions, and the evidence each one needs

4. Write the stopping rule before the first lesson

🔴 This is the one recommendation on this page that has to be acted on in advance, because it cannot be done honestly later.

In week zero, write one sentence: “If none of the five lines has moved by [date six weeks out], we stop and re-diagnose rather than buy more lessons.”

Written at week zero this is an easy sentence. Written at week six, with money spent, a relationship formed with a tutor the child likes, and a term already half gone, it is an almost impossible one — so the decision gets deferred, and deferral is itself a decision, taken by default, in favour of the plan that is not working.

A stopping rule is not pessimism. It is the only thing that makes “continue” a real choice rather than the absence of one.

5. Who to ask — and the one question only the child can answer

• The school sees him working unaided, among peers, without you in the room. That is information you cannot get at home and it is the first thing a specialist would ask for. Ask what has changed in class, not whether he is doing better.
• The tutor knows what was covered, which matters. But asking anyone to assess their own plan is asking them to mark their own paper — and that applies to you as the person who chose the plan, not only to them. Ask what has been covered and what he can now do unaided; do not ask whether it is working.
• 🔴 The child answers one question more reliably than anyone else: “When you see a question like this now, do you know what to do first?” Knowing the first move is the thing that changes earliest and shows up in no grade for weeks. And ask “what were you doing here?” rather than “why did you get this wrong?”. The first gets you a diagnosis; the second gets you an apology.

6. What not to count

• Hours studied. An effort measure, not an outcome measure — and it can rise because the method is ineffective, not because commitment improved.
• Topics or pages covered. Coverage is not mastery, and most plans that fail do so while “on schedule”.
• Lessons used from the package. That measures the invoice.
• How confident he feels. Familiar material reads as easy and easy reads as understood — and he does know it, for as long as the page is in front of him. Why the most popular revision methods are the weakest.
• The grade alone. See the quick answers above.

7. When this framework does not apply to you

• If the obstacle has not been identified yet. Tracking progress along an undiagnosed path measures compliance, not effect. Start with the marked paper.
• If attendance is the problem, not understanding. Then regularity is the only line worth tracking, and nothing else will move until it does.
• If your child has just changed curriculum, school or language of instruction. Adjustment produces exactly this pattern of unstable signals for a term, and reading it as a failing plan is a common and expensive mistake.
• If the gap was always small. A short, targeted piece of work may finish before six weeks, and then there is nothing left to track.
• If the tracking has become a source of tension at home. A measurement session that turns into an interrogation costs more than it returns: you lose the information, because he will stop telling you what actually happened. Move it into the lesson instead.

📱 WhatsApp +971 56 660 8336 — to arrange a starting-point session

Frequently asked questions

How soon can I tell whether tutoring is working?

Not before two weeks, and you should not wait beyond about six. Before two weeks you are reading day-to-day variation. Beyond six you are paying for a decision you could have made earlier, and the term is going past.

What if the grade has not moved at all?

A flat grade with movement on any of the five week-zero lines means the plan is working and the grade has not caught up. Grades are a lagging and noisy measure: they arrive weeks after the work and they move with the difficulty of the paper as much as with the student.

The grade went up. Is that not enough?

Not on its own. Papers differ in length, difficulty and in which topics they happen to test, so a higher mark can describe an easier paper rather than a better-prepared student. Check whether anything else moved with it; if nothing did, the paper is the likelier explanation.

What should I write down before the first lesson?

Five lines, dated: the gap named precisely, the commonest error type on the last paper, how much help he needed to start one question, the seconds between reading a question and writing a first step, and whether he could do it with the wording changed.

Why write a stopping rule in advance?

Because at week six the decision is no longer neutral. Money has been spent, a relationship has formed, and a term is half gone, so the decision gets deferred — and deferral is a decision by default in favour of the plan that is not working. Written before the first lesson, the same sentence is easy.

Should I ask the tutor whether the tutoring is working?

Ask what has been covered and what your child can now do unaided. Asking anyone to assess their own plan is asking them to mark their own paper, and that applies to you as the person who chose it as much as to them.

Is “he feels more confident” a sign of progress?

Not reliably. Familiar material reads as easy and easy reads as understood, so confidence tends to track familiarity with the page rather than ability to work without it.

Nothing has moved after six weeks. Do we need more lessons?

Probably not more of the same. No movement on any line usually means the obstacle sits earlier than what is being taught, so the next step is re-diagnosis rather than additional hours. And do not continue in order to justify what has already been spent: that money is gone either way, and the only open question is about the next six weeks.