Boosting Student Success Through Tutor-Teacher Collaboration

Private tutors and MOE teachers should not be at odds with one another.

We are not adversaries. After all, we are both working towards the same goal of helping our wonderfully talented students thrive in their studies and in their character building.

Instead of feeding into this false narrative that one type of teacher is better than the other, let’s try to shift our mindsets to a more collaborative one.

Here are some strategies that we employed as a pilot test a year ago with some of our students’ private tutors by establishing open communication channels with them:

1. With parents’ consent, we provided regular feedback to our students’ private tutors about their performance in the classroom, their weak areas, and where we felt the private tutors could come in to support us.

2. We also shared the latest syllabus and classroom lesson plan with the tutors, so that the tutors could guide our students effectively, in line with the school curriculum.

3. In return, the private tutors gave us useful feedback about our students’ learning in a small-group or 1-to-1 setting, which provided us with valuable insights about the unique learning abilities of our students.

4. The private tutors also gave us feedback on the amount of homework given and the child’s ability to handle the demands of the homework that we, as school teachers, would not have had the chance to consider otherwise.

The benefit of this collaboration between school teachers and private tutors was that the students saw us as one united force, working seamlessly together for their benefit.

No longer could the students employ excuses like “my school teacher taught me this but my private tutor said it’s wrong”, or “I’ll just get my tutor to do my homework for me”, because us teachers and private tutors were constantly in communication.

This student-centred approach that fostered mutual respect between teachers and tutors, as well as helped the alignment of the curriculum, was very effective for everyone.

Instead of running individual races, let’s imagine that we’re working together to pass the baton smoothly to one another for the success of the entire team.

Private tutors, we really value you for the hard work and support that you continue to give us teachers and our beloved students. Thank you so much.

(If you’re a private tutor who’d like to understand more about MOE classroom approaches to support your students, please feel free to drop us a message, and we’ll be more than happy to help you out).