Why Your Child's Brain Needs Weekly Tutoring (Not Monthly Marathons)
I had a phone call yesterday that I’ve had a hundred times before.
A mum rang to ask about booking four intensive tutoring sessions — back-to-back, all in one weekend, right before her son’s mocks.
“Will that be enough?” she asked.
And I had to give her an answer she wasn’t expecting:
“It might help a bit. But honestly? Four hours spread across four weeks would make ten times more difference.”
She went quiet for a moment. Then:
“Really?”
Really.
Let me show you why.
Your brain hates cramming (even though it feels productive)
Here’s what happens when you cram:
Your child sits down on Sunday night. Opens their textbook. Studies for three hours straight.
It feels intense. It feels productive. It looks like hard work.
And immediately after? They probably could answer questions about what they just learned.
But here’s the problem: that knowledge hasn’t actually moved into long-term memory yet.
Neuroscientists call this the “illusion of knowing.” Your brain recognises information because you just saw it — but that’s not the same as knowing it.
Come exam day, three weeks later? Most of it’s gone.
I’ve watched this happen hundreds of times. The student who crammed the night before, convinced they knew it all, sitting in the exam room thinking: “I know I revised this. Why can’t I remember it?”
It’s not their fault. It’s just how memory works.
What actually builds long-term understanding
There’s a learning principle called spaced repetition.
It sounds complicated, but the idea is simple:
Your brain remembers things better when you encounter them multiple times, with gaps in between.
Here’s why:
When you first learn something, your brain creates a fragile pathway. Think of it like a footpath across a field — barely visible, easily lost.
If you don’t revisit that information, the pathway fades.
But if you come back to it a week later — and again the week after — that pathway gets stronger. It becomes a track. Then a road. Then a motorway.
That’s why weekly tutoring works so much better than monthly or last-minute intensive sessions.
It’s not about how many hours your child spends learning something.
It’s about how many times they retrieve it from memory.
The magic of "I've forgotten this"
Here’s something parents often find surprising:
The moment when your child sits down with their tutor and says “I can’t remember what we did last week” — that’s not a bad moment.
That’s the exact moment when the deepest learning happens.
Because now their brain has to work to retrieve that information.
They struggle. The tutor gives a small hint. They try again. It clicks.
And that struggle — that cognitive effort — is what cements the learning into long-term memory.
One of our tutors told me about a Year 10 student she works with. Every week, at the start of the session, she asks: “Right, remind me — how do you calculate percentage change?”
And every week, the student groans, thinks hard, and works it out.
By the time mocks came around? She didn’t even hesitate. It was automatic.
That’s not because she crammed it. It’s because she retrieved it, over and over again, until it stuck.
Why eleven weeks matters
This is why I always tell parents: if you’re going to start tutoring, start it now.
Not two weeks before exams. Not “when things get serious.”
Now.
Because Spring Term is eleven weeks long. And eleven weeks of consistent, weekly practice is long enough to:
- Build genuine understanding (not just surface recognition)
- Develop exam technique through repeated practice
- Build automatic recall with core skills
- Most importantly: build confidence
I watched this happen with Elsie, one of our Year 10 students.
She started weekly Physics tutoring at the beginning of Spring Term with a grade 3. She wasn’t panicking, she wasn’t cramming – just showing up every week, working through problems, making mistakes, getting feedback.
By the time she sat her mocks at the end of term? Grade 6.
Her mum emailed: “Amazing to see the progression in less than one term.”
But here’s what I want you to understand: it wasn’t magic.
It was just the neuroscience of spaced repetition, playing out exactly as it should.
The question every parent asks me
“But Claire — what if we can’t afford weekly sessions all year?”
Fair question.
Here’s my honest answer: one term of consistent weekly tutoring will make more difference than six months of sporadic, last-minute sessions.
If you can only do one term, do Spring Term.
It’s the longest, steadiest stretch. Eleven weeks. No Christmas chaos, no long summer break. Just consistent, uninterrupted progress.
That’s enough time for the neuroscience of spaced repetition to actually work.
If you’d like to talk about what weekly tutoring could look like for your child, I’m happy to have a quick conversation.
Book a free 20-minute call:
Spring Term starts Monday 5th January. Eleven weeks of steady progress.
Warmly,
Claire Meadows-Smith
Founder, The Community Schools
