Quality of our tutors
The Community Schools has a fabulous team of tutors who come together as a cooperative. We are all highly experienced and successful classroom teachers who each excel in their specialist subject. Many of us are still working in mainstream education. A considerable number are examiners and Heads of Departments. All have up to date knowledge of their subject curriculum, exam requirements and create a supportive yet lively learning environment.
Our tutors are resourceful, motivated and well prepared which enables us to create a flexible learning programme for each of our students. Tutors help to promote independent learning, time management and revision techniques beyond the tutoring sessions.
The Community Schools policy of providing only experienced and fully trained teachers, the majority with at least 10 years experience, enables us to provide students with invaluable insights and perspective to both excel in the subject and perform at the highest level in exams.
When the Community Schools invite a new tutor to join their cooperative of like minds it follows a formal review of their training, career and performance as a teacher which includes checking at least 2 professional references. There is an interview to understand the motivation to join is at least as much, if not more, about caring for students and supporting their needs than it is about earning money. There is of course a DBS certificate check which is a requirement of our insurance.
Community Schools continuously monitors the quality of tutoring, both in the face to face and online sessions. Students are asked to complete online feedback forms at the end of courses that provides us useful and valuable feedback to supplement peer reviews.
If you are interested in working for us as a tutor then please follow this link
Founding Thoughts
The Community Schools came into being to provide not just better but best tutoring for school students. Claire Meadows-Smith was Head of Mathematics at St Albans Catholic High School in Ipswich and in that role was frequently asked by tutors and tutoring businesses to be introduced to parents of students needing help. Indeed, she was also asked by parents for recommendations. The truth is that tutoring has become a big and totally unregulated part of the assessment driven “grade chasing” of secondary school life. Claire believes her students, our children, deserve much better.
The cash-in-hand hiring of students and young teachers to tutor round the kitchen table, theirs or yours, is fraught with risks. The quality of tuition is a “lucky dip”, proper safeguarding is unstructured, knowledge of the required curriculum is missing, experience of examiners requirements a mystery. None of this is acceptable.
Claire led a group of like-minded professional teachers to form a cooperative of experienced teachers, the Community Schools, to ensure that the students they care for in the classroom get the very best they deserve when they look to boost the effectiveness of their studies with a private tutor. Furthermore, to be able to access high quality tutoring at affordable prices.
