Questions, answered properly

A tutor is someone who teaches one student, or a very small group, outside the classroom — usually to fix something specific rather than to deliver a whole curriculum to a room. In practice the word covers an enormous range: a university student earning weekend money, a retired schoolteacher, a full-time subject specialist. What the title does not tell you is how well any of them teach. That is why this site publishes the curriculum, the reviews and the monthly reports rather than leaning on the word.

As a noun it means a private teacher working with one student or a small group. As a verb it means to teach that way. It comes from the Latin ‘tutor’, meaning a guardian or watcher — someone responsible for one person rather than for a class of thirty. That origin is closer to the real job than modern usage suggests: most of what this work consists of is noticing what one particular child is doing, which nobody can do for thirty at once.

Tutoring is teaching aimed at one student’s actual gaps rather than at a syllabus timetable. A school lesson has to move at the pace of the class; a tutoring session moves at the pace of the child in it, so it can stop, go back three years, or spend a whole hour on one idea. In practice it usually means a weekly session, a short piece of work set in between, and somebody tracking whether what was weak last month is still weak.

Similar training, different job. A schoolteacher delivers a curriculum to a class, manages a room and answers to a school. A tutor works for you, teaches one child, and answers to whether that child improves. The subject knowledge is the same — I am a teacher by background. What changes is that I can ask your child to explain their reasoning out loud every few minutes and adjust on the spot, which is simply not possible with thirty students and a bell.

One class, one student, one tutor, with no other children on the call. The whole hour belongs to your child, so the pace follows them rather than an average. It means the lesson can stop the moment something is not landing, the questions are pitched at exactly their level, and no time goes on waiting for others to catch up or on keeping order. Every class on this site is one-on-one; there are no group sessions at all.

Three that actually matter. The pace is set by your child, so nothing is skipped because the class had to move on and nothing is repeated because others needed it. The feedback is immediate — a mistake is caught in the sentence it is made in, not a fortnight later in a marked book. And the plan is specific to the gaps your child has. The honest trade-off is cost: it is more expensive per hour than a group class, and it should be.

Not yet, and not in the way it is usually claimed. AI is genuinely good at explaining a method, generating practice questions and marking them, and I encourage students to use it for exactly that. What it does not do is notice that a child has gone quiet because they are embarrassed, work out that the real trouble with quadratics is a Grade 7 gap in what a letter stands for, or hold a fourteen-year-old to a habit across eight months. That is most of the job.

Yes, entirely. Every class is one student with one teacher, and it is the same teacher every week — Priyanka Nakoti teaches the great majority of them herself. There are no group classes and no assistants. We do keep a few other well-qualified part-time teachers, and on an hour Priyanka genuinely cannot make, one of them takes the class from the plan already written for your child rather than the class being cancelled; you are told beforehand who it will be. Siblings are taught separately, though they can be scheduled back to back if that suits your evening better.

They are different kinds of thing, so it depends on what you need. Preply is a marketplace with thousands of tutors across many subjects and languages — better if you want breadth of choice, a very low entry price, or a language taught nowhere here. TutorWyz is one named teacher rather than a catalogue: the same person assesses, plans, teaches the classes and writes the monthly report, across grades 1 to 12 in IB, Cambridge IGCSE and A-level, AP, CBSE, CISCE and NIOS, with a few well-qualified part-time teachers only as cover for the hours she cannot take. If what went wrong last time was a tutor who changed every term, that difference is the entire point. If you want to browse and compare dozens of profiles, a marketplace genuinely serves you better.

It is a 30-minute live session with your child, not a sales call with you. I spend the first part finding out what they are covering at school and where they feel stuck, then we teach something properly so you can see how a real class runs. Afterwards you get a short written assessment and a suggested term plan. You keep both whether or not you book anything, and I do not ask for card details to arrange it.

Yes, whatever they are. Most of the families I teach are not in India, so I teach at every hour of every day of the year — there are no fixed windows you have to fit around. Pick the hour that suits your child in your own timezone, including weekends, public holidays and school-night early mornings. Once you book, the confirmation and calendar invite use your local time too.

Yes — there are no closed days. Saturday and Sunday classes are as ordinary as weekday ones, public holidays are not a gap, and the small hours are bookable if that is genuinely when your child works best. It also means a class missed for a school trip or a family visit can usually be moved to the same week rather than dropped.

Classes are one-to-one with a named teacher you know in advance — never a rotating pool, and if a part-time teacher ever covers an hour you are told who beforehand. Parents are welcome in any class at any time without notice. I do not record classes unless you ask for a recording, and if you do, it is shared with you and then deleted. No student’s name, photo or work is used on this website or anywhere else without a parent’s written permission.

Ask for three things before you pay anything: what they will actually teach, how they will show you it is working, and who will be in the room each week. A good tutor can answer all three in writing. Be wary of anyone leading with a success percentage, anyone who cannot tell you what is in the syllabus they claim to teach, and anyone who will not name your tutor. Then take a trial class and watch one thing — whether your child talks during it.

Match the person to the actual problem. If it is a specific gap, you need someone who assesses before teaching. If it is confidence, you need someone your child is not frightened of. If it is exam technique, you need someone who has worked against that board’s mark scheme. Sit in on the trial, then ask your child one question afterwards: did you understand more at the end than at the start? Their answer tells you more than any credential does.

The one who makes a student reason rather than memorise. Chemistry is where memorisation quietly stops working, usually around Grade 11 — Organic Chemistry has far too many reactions to hold as a list, so a student taught to recall rather than to reason runs out of room. Look for a teacher who asks why a reaction goes the way it does, who enforces units and significant figures in numerical work, and who marks against the board your child will actually sit.

There is no single best age, but the most useful ones are the transitions: the move into abstract work around grades 6 to 8, and the two years before a board exam. Primary-age tutoring earns its place mainly for reading fluency and number sense, which everything later rests on. Earlier is not automatically better — a young child who is coping well at school usually needs time and sleep more than another hour of lessons.

Within the school year, the best moment is the start of a term rather than the fortnight before an exam. Starting early leaves time to assess properly, build a plan, and let the work between classes do its part. The worst moment is the month before a board exam, when there is time to drill technique but not to rebuild what sits underneath it. That said, if a gap has already opened, the second-best time is now — gaps in Maths and Science compound fast.

When there is a reason, rather than on a schedule. A child who is coping, enjoys the subject and finishes their homework does not need tutoring because their classmates have it. The point to start is when something specific has gone wrong — a topic that never landed, a board change after moving country, a slide in confidence — or when a child is far ahead, bored, and the school cannot stretch them. Both are good reasons. Drifting into it because everyone else has is not.

In my experience, in this order: that the tutor is consistent and does not change; that they explain what is wrong in plain language rather than in jargon; that the child will actually talk to them; and that progress can be seen somewhere other than in the child’s own account of it. Price matters, but it is rarely first — most families who write to me have already paid for tutoring that did not work.

The signal is rarely the grade itself. It is homework that takes far longer than it should, a child who understands in class but cannot start the exercise at home, a subject they have begun describing as something they are bad at, or a widening gap between effort and result. One poor test is not a signal; a pattern across a term usually is. If you are unsure, the trial assessment will tell you plainly — including when the answer is that they do not need one.

Usually, when the problem is a gap in understanding, exam technique or confidence — those respond well to one-to-one attention and a written plan. It helps much less when the real issue is workload, sleep, an undiagnosed learning difficulty, or a subject the child has no interest in whatsoever. Tutoring can paper over those for a term but will not fix them. I would rather say that after the trial than take a booking for something an hour a week cannot solve.

Smaller than most parents expect, and it still matters. The useful parts are protecting the time so the class is not moved every week, making sure the short work set between classes actually gets done, and reading the monthly report. The unhelpful parts are sitting on screen throughout, which makes most children perform rather than think, and asking daily whether they are improving. You are welcome in any class without notice — most children simply do better with a parent within earshot rather than in frame.

IB, Cambridge International (IGCSE and A-level), the US High School Diploma with AP, CBSE, CISCE (ICSE and ISC) and NIOS, for grades 1 to 12. If your child has recently changed country or board, say so when you book — that gap is one of the most common reasons families come to me, and the first few classes are usually spent mapping what the new syllabus assumes they already know.

Yes, and this is the thing I am asked for most often. Hindi here is a spoken language course rather than an examination subject, so it starts with conversation and everyday usage; the Devanagari script follows once there is speech to attach it to. It is designed for children who hear some Hindi at home but have never spoken or read it properly. Children who start from nothing at all are also welcome; it simply takes longer.

A laptop or tablet with a working camera and microphone, and a reasonably stable connection. Classes run on Zoom or Google Meet with a shared digital whiteboard, and a phone works at a push but makes writing maths difficult. Nothing needs to be bought or installed beyond the meeting app.

You get a written progress report every month covering what was taught, what improved, what is still weak, and what we will do about it. For pack students there is also a mid-term parent call. You are welcome to sit in on any class, though in my experience most children work better when a parent is within earshot rather than on screen.

All classes are one-to-one, because the whole method depends on pacing to one child. Siblings are taught separately and I am happy to schedule them back to back. If both siblings study with me, get in touch before booking a pack and we will work out the timetable together.

One hour a week is enough to keep a child ahead in a single subject, and it is where most families here start. It is not enough on its own to close a large gap quickly — that usually takes two a week for a term, then back down to one. What makes the hour work is the twenty to thirty minutes of work done between classes. An hour a week with nothing in between moves very slowly, whatever the tutor does in it.

One or two days for a single subject, on separate days rather than back to back. Two subjects usually means two days. Spacing matters more than total time: the same two hours split across two days beats two hours in one sitting, because the gap in between is where recall actually forms. Past three days a week the limiting factor stops being teaching time and becomes how much a child can absorb and still have an evening.

One to two hours per subject per week. One keeps a child ahead; two is normal when catching up or preparing for boards. Above three hours a week in one subject the returns fall off sharply — tiredness sets in and the independent work that consolidates it gets squeezed out. If a child seems to need more than that just to keep up, the problem is usually not the number of hours, and I will say so rather than sell you more of them.

Whenever your child is actually alert, which is not the same as whenever the diary is empty. For most children that is before school, or an hour or two after it — not last thing at night once everything else is done. Weekend mornings suit longer exam-preparation sessions well. Because classes here run at every hour of every day, you can pick the hour that fits your child rather than the one left over, and it is booked in your timezone rather than India’s.

Sixty minutes is the standard here and suits most students from around Grade 6 upwards. Younger children often do better with forty-five, because concentration rather than content is the limit. Exam-preparation sessions sometimes run to ninety minutes when working through a full past paper under timed conditions. The free trial is thirty minutes, which is long enough to assess and to teach something properly without tiring a child out.

If you mean how long families stay: most stay a full academic year and a good number stay several. The shortest useful engagement is about a term — six to eight weeks will fix one specific topic but will not change how a child works. If you mean how long a booked pack stays valid, unused classes remain usable for six months. And if tutoring has done its job it should end: a child who no longer needs it should stop.

Parents, in almost every case here, and occasionally an older student paying for themselves. In some countries part of the cost is covered elsewhere — a school hardship fund, an employer’s education allowance, or a government scheme. It is worth checking if you are in the UK, the Gulf or Singapore, where relocation packages sometimes include an education allowance. Nothing here is billed to a school or third party, but an invoice is issued for every payment so it can be claimed back.

The monthly packages are for exactly that: 16 hours a month, a one-hour class every Monday to Friday, or one every Saturday and Sunday, each for a fixed monthly fee published on the pricing page in US dollars. Unused hours stay valid for six months, and the free trial class comes first, so you can see whether it suits your child before you choose one.

It varies enormously by country and by who is teaching — a university student and an experienced subject teacher are not the same purchase, and the going rate in London, Dubai and Delhi differs sharply for the same hour. Be careful comparing a headline rate against one that adds registration, materials or platform fees on top. The rate on the pricing page here is the entire cost, published in US dollars, with nothing added at checkout.

Less than an in-person tutor of the same experience, because there is no travel and no room to pay for — and more than a group class, because you are buying the whole hour rather than a share of it. Anything far below the local market rate usually means a very inexperienced tutor or a class that turns out to be shared. Compare what is included rather than the headline: lesson planning, materials, past papers and a written monthly report all sit inside the monthly fee here.

Physics usually sits at the top of a tutor’s range, alongside Maths, because far fewer tutors can teach it well at Grades 11 and 12 — and rates rise again for board and entrance-exam years. Here Physics is taught as part of Science for grades 1 to 12 within the same monthly packages as every other subject, and their prices are published on the pricing page in US dollars.

About the same as Physics in most markets, with Organic Chemistry at Grades 11 and 12 often carrying a premium, because it is the part most tutors would rather avoid. Watch for a low quoted rate that then charges separately for notes, practicals or past papers. Chemistry here is taught as part of Science within the same monthly packages, and their prices are on the pricing page.

Not here, beyond the free trial class — this is how I earn a living, and I would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Free help genuinely worth having: your child’s own Chemistry teacher, who will usually make time if asked directly; Khan Academy and the NCERT exemplar solutions for CBSE; and your board’s past papers and mark schemes, which are published free and are the single most underused resource there is. School and library homework clubs are worth asking about too. If you want to see what paid tutoring adds before spending anything, the thirty-minute trial costs nothing and needs no card details.

This one is usually asked by people who tutor rather than by parents, so, briefly: price against your local market and your actual experience, charge for the planning and marking you do outside the hour instead of pretending it is free, and publish one rate rather than negotiating each time. Advertising a low headline rate and then adding materials or registration fees is the practice that makes families distrust tutors in general. For what this tutor charges, the pricing page has it.

Prices on this site are in US dollars for every family, wherever you live, and you are charged that published amount. You can pay by card or international bank transfer. An invoice is issued for every payment.

Reschedule free of charge with at least 12 hours’ notice, as often as you need. Inside 12 hours the class is counted as taught, because the slot cannot realistically be refilled — the exception is illness or a genuine emergency, where I will simply move it. If I ever have to cancel, that class is replaced at a time that suits you.

Yes. Unused classes in a pack are refundable in full within 30 days of purchase, and packs stay valid for six months. If you are unhappy after a single paid class, tell me and I will refund it. The full terms are on the refund policy page.

One a week is enough to stay ahead in a single subject and is what most families start with. Two a week is normal when a child is behind and catching up, or is preparing for board exams. More than three is rarely useful — the limiting factor becomes the work they do between classes, not the classes themselves. I will tell you honestly after the trial.