We live in interesting times for tutors worldwide. In some countries, tutoring has become a panacea for educational disruption, displacement and disadvantage. In others, we have become the pariahs of the education sector, banned and forced underground.

In the UK, tutors are filling staffing gaps and supporting war refugees. Around £4.9 billion has been allocated from government funding to provide COVID-19 ‘catch-up’ support directly to schools in England, including through tutoring.1 This collision of the public and private sectors is disrupting the status quo of tutoring and forcing the profession to prepare for regulation, quality assurance and accountability. Improved safeguards such as criminal record checks are fast becoming an expectation, thankfully.

The modalities of tutoring have changed beyond recognition. Online marketplaces are now the most common way for students to find tutors. Improved internet access, video conferencing platforms and social media are making tutors more accessible and affordable for every student. Whilst ten years ago tutoring looked like two people sitting together with a book between them, today it is very often a group of mixed-age, mixed-nationality students gathered in an online room with a tutor they will never meet in person. How exciting is that?

However, even now, there are ideas that persist about tutoring which are holding us back. Some of these ideas will be old news, speaking to the way things used to be. Others will be fake news, speaking to a fear of the unknown. For many reasons, which we will look at together, the optics of tutoring are still not great. To improve this, and embrace our profession, we need to explore and, yes, to explode some pernicious and pervasive myths about tutoring.

Misconception 1: I Know What a Tutor Looks Like

Twenty years ago, tutoring was a specialised local marketplace regulated by a small and powerful client base. It was a safety net, a failsafe for the children of the wealthy. Tutors relied on word-of-mouth referrals. The names of the best in the business were guarded jealously or whispered by parents like a secret password – or, perhaps, a secret weapon.

In those days, there were four main tutor archetypes: the governess, the teacher/tutor, the boy-next-door and the gatekeeper. Each one had a specific role and a clearly delineated relationship with students and parents based on perceived authority and power. If you wanted to be a tutor, you had to fall into one of these categories, you had to work with families who could afford you, you had to know your place and you had to get results.

The governess was a uniquely positioned member of staff in a high-net-worth family. This individual would leverage a good degree at a famous university for a well-paid situation as a live-in tutor, often enjoying the opportunity to travel the world in style. Excellent interpersonal skills were a must.

Melissa Harvey started out as the governess archetype, travelling the world and becoming a highly valued and trusted member of the family. Melissa built long-lasting relationships, and has stayed in touch with her students for decades, becoming a mentor for life.

The teacher/tutor had an air of experience and authority. This type of tutor was reassuring, and sometimes reassuringly scary, to the parents as well as the children. Formal and proper, they used old-school teaching approaches to mimic the school experience in comfortable kitchens and studies. Depending on whether the student needed a totally different approach or simply more of the same, this type of tutoring either really helped the child or really didn’t.

I fell into this category of tutor (except the scary bit). Parents trusted me because I was in tune with what was happening and expected in schools. I used familiar jargon, resources and approaches, adjusting them in the moment to the needs of the student.

The boy-next-door was at the opposite end of the career path. He was an unpretentious high-schooler who did well in his exams. He was relatable, passionate about his subject and excited to make a difference in the world. He started out helping family friends and quickly worked out that tutoring was more comfortable than a newspaper round.

Johnny Manning, founder of Manning’s Tutors, is a long-haired, left- wing entrepreneur who started out as the boy-next-door maths tutor in his village. Local parents took good care of him, with each student’s family driving him from their house to the next one, with the final family of the evening giving him dinner before dropping him back home.

The last of the traditional tutor archetypes is the gatekeeper. Whether it is private school entrance exams, Law School Admission Tests or Oxbridge interview preparation, these tutors have the techniques, knowledge and connections to give students their best shot at crossing a threshold. Traditionally, gatekeepers with the best track records were treated with awe. They were the maestros and divas of the tutoring world, commanding high rates and fierce loyalty.

Anita Oberoi is an 11+ entrance exam tutor. Her students are under a great deal of pressure to succeed, and so is Anita. But she does things differently. Remembering the pressure she felt as a student taking the 11+ years ago, she is determined to create a different experience for her students. It is a high-stakes niche, but Anita is determined to support children’s mental health and well-being as well as their academic outcomes.

Today, the tutoring sector looks very different to how it did when you and I grew up. The lines have blurred between the four archetypes and many more have sprung up in-between. Whilst there is still plenty of in-person, one-to-one tutoring happening, a wide variety of other delivery models now exist.

Parents and students rely on tutors for all sorts of support they can’t get, or can’t get enough of, in the classroom. Some tutors have a wealth of professional experience to draw on, and others are only one or two years ahead of the students. Some tutor online, following time zones to be able to teach throughout the day. Some support home-schoolers or follow world-schoolers on their travels, either physically or online. Tutors can now be found in every strand of the education landscape. We each have our specialism, and we are each as unique as the students we support.

Misconception 2: Tutoring is Only for the Most Privileged

The press loves to get its teeth into tutoring. Divisive headlines and articles about tutoring featuring phrases like ‘parental hothousing’, ‘the wild west of the education landscape’ or ‘fuelling the educational arms race’ are reductive and dismissive of all the hard-working, caring people in our space. Society may fear a decentralised education model, but this might be precisely why tutoring can be so effective.

Maybe it is the nebulous nature of the profession that leaves tutors open to such stigma, or perhaps it is the implication of elitism. Whatever the reason, the press, on the left and the right, keep the tutor on the outside. Rather than fearing an educational arms race, why don’t we celebrate the support on offer and boost subsidies for the least advantaged students to access the same support as their peers? Surely, our social responsibility is to close gaps by raising up the less advantaged rather than disabling the rest?

Over the past three decades, a succession of researchers, school leaders and change-makers working separately and, increasingly, together have pushed for change in education. Developments in neuroscience have accentuated two interconnected themes: inclusion and research-informed practice. As a result, we are now using a data-led approach to what works best in teaching to ensure that we provide a more effective educational experience to more of our young people.

Whilst there have been the inevitable fads and flip-flops along the way, the consistent drive towards inclusive, evidence-driven practice means there is now a vast body of work informing policymakers. One of the most comprehensive and accessible resources is the Education Endowment Foundation’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit.2 The toolkit evaluates a wide range of interventions that schools can deploy to support disadvantaged learners. It measures impact in months of progress against cost and strength of evidence. The data point to what educationalists call ‘best bets’ in what will work for students; there are no guarantees because the variables are so complex. Although the toolkit isn’t perfect, it has been a game-changer for policymakers and school leaders looking to make evidence-based budget decisions since 2011.

According to the Education Endowment Foundation, the headline news is that well-delivered one-to-one tuition can improve student outcomes by five months. In addition, many of the other high-ranking interventions – such as feedback, self-regulation, metacognition and mastery learning – are all features of effective tutoring. Furthermore, small group tuition (which the toolkit cites as potentially more useful since it...