Blog « Beanbag

Going Dutch Jon 19 August

With up to 200,000 A level students unlikely to find a place in a UK university, I was interested to read that Dutch universities are attempting to tempt away British students, with the lure of tuition in English combined with lower fees and cost of living.

Before we dismiss this as media hype, we would do well to remind ourselves of the contribution overseas students make to UK universities and the wider economy. The UK has been very successful at attracting overseas students over the years, indeed the first recorded student was Emo of Friesland back in 1190. According to the Economist, 3m overseas students account for £2.9bn of university income (10% of the total) and add £2.3bn to the wider economy (not all alcohol related, they say).

So is it a good idea? My personal opinion is yes, and on a number of levels. Firstly, going to university is important as it broadens students experiences and what better than going to a different country to do so. Secondly, I do not see the logic in making students wait until they enter a university as it creates a log-jam for the next years intake. Thirdly, I gather that life in the Netherlands isn't all football and Heineken, although that is often what the media would have you believe.

So why not consider going overseas to learn? It seems like a sensible decision to me.

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Uniforms, shoes and tutors Jon 18 August

We have just returned from our summer family holiday to the panic of buying school uniforms for the next school year. Getting the right sized school uniforms is a pain, let alone buying the right sized shoes.

You might be interested to hear that we have already seen large numbers of parents seeking tutors for their children for the next school year. To some it might seem like planning too far in advance, but the reality is that finding a tutor in September and October can prove very difficult. Our advice to prospective parents is to start looking now. At Beanbag we have 2,500 UK based tutors waiting for you to contact them - so get cracking.

All that is left now is for me to take my children down to Clarkes to buy those new shoes. Who says that the summer holiday period is restful?

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Tutor Beware: Bill McKown & Alloy Vera Jon 23 June

We blogged back in March about the danger from scammers contacting tutors.

We are sad to report that a small number of our tutors have been contacted by Bill Mckown and Alloy Vera, who are scammers based in Lagos, Nigeria. We have banned the users and reported them to their ISP provider.

We have contacted the tutors effected, and reviewing our security measures. In the meantime, please can our tutors be vigilant and let us know immediately if they suspect that someone is not who they say they are.

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Where does the ISA review leave parents? Jon 16 June

The new Home Secretary Theresa May announced yesterday that the Government are to review the new vetting & barring and criminal records regulations to ensure that 'they are scaled back to sensible levels'. Under the existing proposals privately organised tutoring between parents and tutors was outside of the scope of the new regulations, although arrangements made through tutoring agencies would be covered. So to this extent, there was some inconsistency in the way that tutoring was treated by the ISA.

As parents we continue to be very much in favour of the new ISA regulations. Nothing brings the need for tutor checking home more than the recently reported case of the private tutor Ugochukwu Okorie who went on to abuse two young sisters. Would the new regulations have stopped this happening you may ask, well only if the tutor was already known to the authorities and the parents had conducted an ISA check.

Our advice to parents continues to be to make their own tutor checks and follow up references every time they use a new tutor. The ISA would have made the process a whole lot easier - the combination of wider safety checks and ability to look someone up quickly on the database would give parents a much greater sense of security.

So where does this review leave parents? Well, no better off, lets hope that the Government conclude the review quickly so that we can give families that extra piece of information they need to keep their children safe.

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Cash rewards for pupils? Jon 27 May

There was a really interesting article in this weeks Economist, entitled 'Satchel, Uniform, Bonus' which has set me thinking.

As a father of teenage children I know how motivating the prospect of cash can be. I recall a school friend being incentivised to pass their GCSE's by their parent paying them £10 per pass. Quite some carrot for a cash strapped 16 year old, I can tell you.

Anyway, this leads me onto the article which considered what might happen if we started paying students directly for performance. Cash payments reward good exam results immediately, whereas the prospect of a better job in say five years time has little meaning for the student.

Some interesting research has been conducted in Israel which shows that financial incentives increased the number of students completing their school leaving certificate by one third, but only for girls who needed to do only a little more to graduate. Research in the USA highlighted that students read more if they are paid $2 per book (subject to passing a comprehension test).

Research seems to indicate that it is least effective in the target groups that probably need it most, e.g. poor and disadvantaged students. It does seem like a good idea however, and rather than 'throwing the baby out with the bath water' it strikes me that in essence this is a good idea, and something we should investigate further in the UK.

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Exam Tips Jon 25 May

Exam time is upon us again. To say that exams are stressful is an understatement - the horror can stay with us for the rest of our lives.

So you've done as much revision as you meaningfully can. What tips can an examiner give you? Well, these are from George Turnbull, Ofqual's Exam Doctor and published today in School Gate.

Before the exam:

Know when and where your exams are being held.  
Check your equipment, make sure that it is in good working order, and know what is to be provided by your school.  
Check you don't have two exams at the same time. Special arrangements need to be made.  
Don’t cheat or break any rules. You could be disqualified or even arrested. Mobile phones are a menace and barred from the exam hall. Don’t take one in.  
Have a leisurely breakfast or lunch and walk to school, if possible. Be there in good time.  
Avoid friends outside the exam hall. They could confuse you. Keep your thoughts to yourself and concentrate on the exam. That’s why you are there.

In the exam room:

Take six deep breaths, ignore everyone else and concentrate solely on what you have to do. 
Have a glucose sweet, to boost energy to your brain - but don't crunch. 
Read the instructions on the exam papers carefully - do the appropriate number of questions from the right sections, and answer compulsory questions. 
Know how many marks each question carries - don't spend too long on any one. Use the number of marks on the paper as a guide.  
Read questions carefully before you write anything. Time is allowed for this. Use that time to choose your questions, and write notes on the question paper to help you remember later. 
Make sure you answer the question asked. No marks if you don’t. 
If you run out of time, more marks can be gained by completing your remaining answers in outline only. State what you would do and how to do it, by outlining your main arguments in an essay – without writing the essay – and by jotting down formulae in science – stating how you would complete the question – without doing the calculations.

Good advice, I am sure you will agree. After the exam - no post-mortems. Don't worry about the exam you have just taken - you can't do anything about it now. Put the papers in a drawer and look at them again only when your own grandchildren ask to see them. Concentrate instead on the next exam, where you can influence the result."

Finally, all that is left is to wish you all good luck in your exams from all of us at Beanbag.

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''Can you help me with my homework?" Jon 18 May

I took a sharp intake of breath last night, when my youngest son asked for help with his maths homework. There was a tap on my shoulder and the question that so many of us dread ''Dad, can you help me with my homework?''

Schools rightly say that children need to be able to work independently, but there are times when they just need some help - and like any caring parent, you feel that you should be able to provide this support. I found myself saying ''it's not like it was in my day'' - hold on a minute, isn't that what my father said too?

Even when you can provide help, it somehow ends up as an argument - hold on, maybe that's just our family. I can quite understand how any parent trying to teach their offspring to drive is also doomed to failure.

All of this isn't surprising really, when you consider the time expired since we left full time education, let alone changes to the Curriculum in the meantime. Those of you who can recognise my conundrum, will be unsurprised to hear that in a recent survey of 2,000 parents, five out of six parents were embarrassed to say that they struggle to help their children with homework.

So, where next? Well private tutoring can provide that one to one support when it's required. But it's not always practical to find a tutor when you need one, let alone get support at 6pm when the homework is due in at 9am the next day. We have been thinking hard about this, and are working hard on a new online tutoring website which will connect families and CRB checked tutors.

Tutorhub is currently being piloted with a group of families and tutors. If you are interested to learn more about how you can become part of this pilot, please feel free to contact me.

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Online tutoring: TutorHub.Com Jon 15 April

Just a quick blog post to let you know that we have all been busy here at Beanbag Towers working on a new an innovative online tutoring website, TutorHub.Com. We believe that we will be able to provide a credible alternative for face to face tutoring, and look forward to working with our existing clients and tutors on increasing the accessibility of tutoring in people's homes.

We will be trialling it with a group of parents, children and tutors principally based in and around Bristol, in the coming weeks. For the time being, the website is closed to the public - as soon as we are ready for business we will let you know!

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Revision Time Jon 29 March

With exams looming, we thought that you might want to check out our revision techniques video.

It's ranked number 1 on YouTube and has had over 5,500 views to date.

Jen MacTaggart has lots of common sense advice for students.

Enjoy!

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Tutor beware! Jon 25 March

Just a quick blog to let you know that we were contacted by a Beanbag tutor this week who has received a scam email from someone purporting to be a parent.

The offending email is below, for information..

The tutor replied, and the so-called parent offered to prepay for four months and asked the tutor to pass on a payment to a friend. You can guess who would be left out of pocket...

Our advice to tutors is to be circumspect about the information they leave on the internet about themselves. Do not post your email or home address, as this opens you to risks of spam and scam emails and potentially identity theft.

When we set up Beanbag, we introduced private email messaging - so that no-one sees your private details. We can also confirm that the scammer did not contact the tutor through our website.

Nevertheless, we thought it important that we made as many people aware of this problem as we could. If you encounter any similar problems, let us know - so that we can share the bad news with our tutors.

Best wishes from us all at Beanbag!

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Online tutoring - what do you think? Jon 16 March

Beanbag was set-up back in 2007 to assist parents / guardians in finding face to face tutors for their children. Why - because as parents we struggled to find tutors for our children, and because we believe that this is an area where new technology solutions to old problems can make a real and lasting difference.

Our objective was always to increase the accessibility of tutoring, and as a technology business we have been thinking long and hard about other ways in which we could make this happen.

The problem as we see it, is that it's not always possible to find a tutor when you need one, particularly if you live in geographically remote areas for example. It can also be a problem finding one to one support when your child needs help with an assignment or piece of homework. Formal tutoring arrangements whilst valuable are not always the answer. Online tutoring could provide a more cost effective way of tutoring, or provide that bit of supplementary support just when it's required.

Yes there are alternatives. You can join a study programme online, e.g. themathsfactor.com, but this will not necessarily address the specific problems your children have when they need one to one support. Individual tutors sometimes offer skype (internet phone-call) based tutoring as well, but how do you know that they are who they say they are, and how does the tutor get paid?

Some of you may recall that Tutorvista.com entered the UK market in 2007, with a technology based offer providing unlimited online tutoring support by tutors based in India, but for a number of reasons this did not take off here. Why? Based on feedback from my children who used the service, there were dialect, and technology problems, this combined with low customer service levels made it unattractive to us. In spite of these issues, online tutoring is we believe a good idea, all you have to do is to see the number of online tutoring services in the USA, such as Tutor.com to understand the potential of online tutoring to address a wide variety of learning needs.

Our belief is that online tutoring would be attractive to parents in the UK, if it were delivered properly, using technology that children prefer combined with professional customer service. What if we could provide online tutoring direct to parents, using the large number of CRB / ISA checked tutors that we already have listed on Beanbag? Would this be a winner - we think so.

As I said at the beginning, the purpose of this blog is to get your views - as our customers, your opinions count. Please feel free to comment on this blog post below, or email me direct at jonellis@beanbaglearning.com.

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Vetting & Barring: Implications for Private Tutors (Part 2) Jon 24 February

We welcome a guest blogger to Beanbag today - Ian Phillips. Along with Barry Clark, he is co-author of 'Vetting and Barring: A practical guide to the new CRB / ISA scheme'. Ian has helpfully summarised the impact of ISA registration on private tutoring.

Well, it’s nearly here. The much-trailed and, it seems, much-feared Vetting and Barring Scheme is moving into view. July 26^th is the key date, when its public-facing functions kick-off.

For tutors, the impact is fairly clear. Under the law, if you are hired by a family direct, it’s a private arrangement and there is no legal need to register. If you work through an agency, so that the deal is done between that agency and the family, then you will need to register with the Independent Safeguarding Authority. The owner of your agency will commit a crime, as will you, if you don’t do this. And you’ll need to have a meaningful conversation with the agency as to who picks up the bill (around £80).

Even if you only tutor direct with families then you will still need to consider whether to register voluntarily. From the commercial perspective, if your competition is agency-led, then many families will inevitably be drawn towards those ads that carry the magic legend ‘ISA registered’.

It’s a new world, brave or otherwise. Make sure in plenty of time that you’ve decided what you want to do.

Thanks Ian! For Beanbag tutors, you will be relieved to know that we are not an Agency - so there is no need for you to get ISA registered. Be aware however that parents will increasingly look for ISA registration as a safety 'kite mark', so it may be worth getting registered in any case.

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Panorama look at child safety and the ISA Jon 09 February

Some of you may have seen the thought provoking BBC Panorama programme last night entitled 'are you a danger to kids'.

With more than nine million people potentially effected by the vetting and barring scheme, it is something that will touch many people's lives. Certainly those who come into regular contact (more than once a week) with children and vulnerable adults will be expected to obtain ISA registration. We explained the impact on tutors in a previous blog post.

Inevitably the programme touched upon issues around how the ISA will evaluate people - they will be expected to cover not only criminal records but allegations, complaints, tip-offs and suspicions (whether proven or not). An interview with John Pinnington highlighted the distress that unproven allegations can have on an individual, their family and their career.

We will be very much in the hands of the ISA's two hundred strong team of case workers to make the right decisions. We will also be expecting them to safeguard potentially damaging personal data - no computers to be left on trains, please.

So what's our view at Beanbag? Well as parents we welcome anything that reduces the risk that those with evil intentions ever get access to our children. As individuals, we are equally concerned about the human rights issues posed.

The debate will run and run, and I am sure that we will be writing about this again.

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Beanbag welcomes its 2,000th Tutor Jon 26 January

Very good news from Beanbag Towers.

Increasing numbers of tutors across the UK have been joining our website of late, and today we said hello to our 2,000th tutor, Amy Fleming from Edinburgh.

When we set up this website it was because we wanted to improve the accessibility of tutors across the UK, giving parents the opportunity to find tutors online as an alternative to the traditional tutoring agency route.

Not resting on our laurels, we are keen to hear from tutors and parents on what they think of the website and how we can improve its usefulness to them. Please email me at jonellis@beanbaglearning.com I am really interested in what you have to say.

Best wishes from the Beanbag team!

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Getting Recommendations Jon 25 January

Now that we are rapidly approaching 2,000 UK-based tutors listed on Beanbag getting yourself noticed is becoming more important. Tutors have asked us for tips on improving their ranking in location and subject based search results.

You won't be surprised to read that tutor rankings depend on a number of factors, but that parental / client recommendations are very important. Why - well that's what customers tell us that they are most interested in. Indeed we find that tutors with the most complete profiles (including a photograph and a little about themselves) along with recommendations attract the most page views and resulting enquiry emails.

Getting recommendations is very simple. Ask a satisfied customer to log-in to Beanbag, locate your profile, clicking on the 'Recommend' feature. Simple isn't it?

Finally, please can we point tutors again to our recent blog post about email communications. Please ensure that your email is set up to receive our emails - if you don't, then all of the effort that goes into setting up your profile will go to waste, leaving our customers frustrated.

Happy tutoring!

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Every child a reader Jon 11 January

Evidence if any were needed on the effectiveness of one to one tuition was reported in the Times last week.

Research by the Institute of Education, London University has analysed the performance of children with the lowest level of achievement at the end of Year One (aged six) at ten schools. Children that received one to one reading recovery support under the £10m Every Child a Reader programme found that they are now on track to reach the expected level by the end of primary school.

They found evidence that these children made momentous progress within a few months of intensive tuition, and were ahead of their peers by about half a level in reading and a third of a level in writing by the end of year four.

What was interesting about the IOE's research was that it focused on economically disadvantaged children, with just over half taking free school meals, often with English as a second language.

We are pleased to see this initiative opening up the opportunity of private tutoring to all - and would love to see private tutoring make more of an impact in the public sector.

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Problems connecting parents and tutors Jon 08 January

We have been conducting some research on how successful this website is in matching parents / clients and tutors.

A very useful bit of feedback has been that some parents complain of no response from tutors to their tutoring requests. We have been looking at the root cause of this and find that there are two issues:

1. Our emails are sometimes being routed to the tutor's spam folder. In this day and age there is so much email spam that genuine emails also get lost in spam folders. There are a couple of solutions for tutors to address this: marking emails from Beanbag (e.g. when the join the website) as 'not spam' and adding beanbaglearning.com to their email address list.

2. Some tutors are no longer tutoring and decide not to answer the email. If this is the case, then tutors can edit their profiles to (temporarily if needs be) show that they are no longer tutoring, or ask us to delete their profiles altogether. If we find that tutors regularly do not answer emails we reserve the right to take their details off the website.

In the meantime, we will be introducing new email solutions that dramatically reduce the risk that our emails get included as spam. Needless to say, we will be keeping a close eye on this going forward.

If you are a parent / client and have feedback about this website, please feel free to email me at jonellis@beanbaglearning.com or via Get Satisfaction.

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Monitoring progress at school Jon 05 January

Something that caught our eye today was the news that parents in Bristol, at Brislington Enterprise College (BEC), were to be amongst the first in the country to be able to track their children's progress at school online.

Parents will be able to see regularly updated details of their offspring's achievement, progress, attendance and behaviour. Designed not to replace regular interim and end of year written reports, it provides already information on children direct to parents.

Parents will be able to see their child's timetable and details of absence including actions taken. Parent's can see the value of this, and a parent has described this as a 'positive step forward', as it enables them to see good news and act upon problems quickly.

As parents ourselves we think that this is a great example to what can be done to provide educational information to parents. It also opens the wider question of 'parent voice' in education, and the level to which parents can and should engage with the teaching profession and the school on their child's development.

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Follow us on Twitter Jon 28 December

Those of you that share the madness that is Twitter can find us as Tutor_Beanbag. See you there!

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Zip it, block it, flag it Jon 10 December

Children as young as five will be told to “zip it, block it, flag it” in a new internet safety campaign to be taught in primary schools, and a compulsory part of the national curriculum from September 2011.

“Zip it” tells them not to give out personal details online, while “block it” tells children not to open e-mails or attachments from people they have not heard of, and to block off anyone who sends hurtful messages. “Flag it” advises them to tell an adult if something unnerves or frightens them online.

Targeted directly at children, it reminds the older amongst us of the famous Green Cross Code.

Green Cross Code

So is it really necessary? Well research has found that one in five of the 99 per cent of 8 to 17-year-olds who use the internet had come across inappropriate content, and a third said their parents did not monitor their activity online. So the answer is yes.

Businesses such as Microsoft, Google and Bebo have agreed a range of new requirements, such as offering parents more rigorous privacy settings.

We at Beanbag also embrace the new code, and when its detail becomes clear we will implement it across our website.

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Staying Safe Online Jon 08 December

We at Beanbag have been acutely aware of the need to protect our users online. Indeed over a year ago we commissioned and actioned a third-party Child Safety Review. We have also kept in contact with our friends at ChildSafe.

Action has also been necessary to protect our tutor community particularly from the risk of identity theft. Our secure messaging facility allows clients to contact tutors direct, without the tutor having to disclose their private email address or phone number on their tutor profile.

This is an evolving field, and Tanya Byron has been working with the government in an advisory capacity on online safety.

Around 140 companies, charities and other groups have signed up to the new standards. Measures include features such as the heralded 'Panic Button' allowing children to report offensive and inappropriate content. Beanbag is primarily used by adults, but recognising this risk we have added a 'Report This' button throughout our website.

Details of the new standards are published next week, and we will be looking closely at what we can do to make Beanbag an even safer place for tutoring.

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Tutor Profiles and Getting Noticed Jon 24 November

We are finding that some tutors are very successful in getting noticed by parents, and are receiving numerous enquiries. So how do they do it?

It's simple really - what do parents want to see?

A well written and informative profile, including a photograph
Subjects covered and levels, enabling tutors to be found using the location and subject search tool
And best of all, recommendations from other parents.

Simple really, we would recommend that tutors have a good look at other profiles when they join Beanbag, and update them from time to time.

By the way, did you know that if you currently have enough work, you can take yourself temporarily off the website by unticking the tutor box in your profile? We retain all of your details, so that you can relist yourself at any time, by reticking the tutor box.

We hope that you have found this blog informative.

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Increased demand for tutoring Jon 13 November

Bristol 24-7 today published a news story about tutoring in Bristol and the success of our Bristol-based beanbag website.

In a well researched article, Chris Brown took time to research the market statistics - the Sutton Trust research is extensive and current.

Not so sure that I agree with the Headmaster of Bristol Grammar that it's an indictment of the State education system that parents are willing to pay for private tuition. It's parents doing the best they can for their children pure and simple, and he overlooks the fact that many private school students are privately tutored too.

Nevertheless, no publicity is bad publicity and we thank Chris for his article.

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Vetting & Barring: Implications for Private Tutors Jon 01 October

Many of you are probably mightily confused about what the new Vetting & Barring Scheme (VBS) means to private tutoring.

We have been able to clarify the position, and hope that this article can explain its impact to tutors.

The VBS was set up in response to the murders of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, and the findings of the subsequent Bichard Inquiry. As parents ourselves, we believe that anything that helps improve the safety of children is a good thing and welcome the Scheme.

Working with children and vulnerable adults is becoming a regulated activity, and adults undertaking this will need to be registered with the I ndependent Safeguarding Authority. The ISA will check personal records against central databases, and ensure that unsuitable people are not registered. Once registered, records will be continuously maintained for people, and registration will be revoked if they commit certain key offenses.

Many tutors will find that they will become ISA registered as part and parcel of their job, particularly if they are employed as Teachers or undertake tutoring at University.

Tutors who would not ordinarily have ISA registration will need to apply for this. We are told that this will take the Independent Barring Board seven days to complete. Individual registration will commence on 26th July 2010, and is expected to cost £28 per person.

CRB checking will continue, and will provide parents with more information on the type of criminal records held in your name. These are only ever produced at a point in time, and will become out of date quickly. The ISA check is a much deeper check than the CRB, but will not provide details of offenses in the same way as a CRB check.

To be clear, tutors using the services of Beanbag will be responsible for providing their ISA registration details direct to parents, who will be able to check it direct against the central database. Beanbag has no responsibility to maintain this information and will not provide it to parents.

The Government is undertaking a review of Vetting & Barring, and some details may change. We will keep you posted.

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On being a tutor.... Jon 22 September

Our website is taking on increasing numbers of people with teaching experience, who have not undertaken private tutoring before. We welcome people with all forms of teaching experience, and firmly believe that increasing the supply of suitable tutors can only be good news for students.

Before we launched this website, we undertook a series of market research sessions with tutors, and we thought that new tutors understand what is can be like being a tutor, to help them make sure that it is for them.

Tutors told us that they found tutoring fun and rewarding. They told us that what appealed to them most was:

Having the ability to earn extra money, at a time convenient to themselves and doing something that they enjoyed;
Less stressful environment, dealing with one student is much more straightforward than a large class, and allows you to try different teaching approaches that wouldn't be possible with larger numbers;
One to one interaction with the students, particularly seeing the 'lights go on' when going through problem areas;
Being in someone else's home. Some said that they were treated like a family Aunt or Uncle, and were made to feel very welcome.

But there are downsides too, and all new tutors need to be aware that sometimes they will encounter:

Pressure from parents, who expect rapid results;
Requirement to travel;
Little or no support / communication with the student's School.

Being self-employed also carries responsibilities, income is taxable and a tutor needs to include this in their annual tax return.

At the end of the day though it is all about working with people. Do you have it in you to be a Tutor?

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Making Good Progress? Jon 11 August

We are told that in the UK almost one in five pupils aged 11 and a quarter of 14 year olds are failing to meet national targets on the three-R’s. That said, it was some reassurance that the Government would provide £138m of funding for after-school tutoring for 300,000 pupils per annum by 2010-11 in both English and Maths as part of its Making Good Progress initiative.

It came as a surprise to hear in January that the pilot (of 30,000 pupils) had failed to deliver, indeed only 3,438 children had received tuition in Maths and 3,514 in English.

So what’s the problem? Persuading existing teachers to stay behind after School seems to be the answer. Increased pay rates and conducting the sessions in School hours were suggested as solutions.

Even with these changes, it seems to me that if Schools are struggling to provide 30,000 sessions, what chance will they have in conducting 300,000 in 2010-11? We should be asking why the State Sector overlooking the thriving Private Sector.

If existing Teachers are reluctant to provide the additional tuition required, then the services provided by the large number of suitably qualified independent tutors – many of whom use this website - need to be used.

We live in hope, but failing to deliver on this promise would be a massive disappointment.

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Making Tutoring More Affordable Jon 06 August

The Evening Standard reported in June that increasing numbers of Graduates were becoming Tutors. Some were working for established Agencies whilst others had set up their own Agencies.

Charlotte Handler a Bristol Uni graduate was quoted as saying that Tutoring 'has really rocketed during the past 14 months. Despite the economy, parents are willing to invest more than ever on tutoring, often in addition to school fees. It seems the recession has made everyone realise how necessary a strong education is'. This is backed up by our own experience, indeed only this week we were approached by ITN News to provide a Beanbag Tutor for a televised interview.

We recognise the value that the Agency can add to a Parent's search for a Tutor. Pre-screening, taking up of references and security checks are valuable services. For the Tutor they pick up new business under an established Brand Name, and hopefully at a better rate than they would normally earn.

When we started Beanbag, we undertook alot of market research and found that affordability was a big issue for many Parents. Cutting out Agency fees is one way of making Tutoring more accessible to those Parents who are unable to pay £70 per hour. Beanbag is designed to make this search process as easy as possible, and provide parents with full Tutor information (location, subjects, rate etc) along with recommendations provided by other Parents and Students. It also has a Wanted Ads facility, that will email Tutors on our books to ask them to recommend someone to Parents who cant find the right Tutor for their child.

Looking forward, there is clearly a role for both Agencies and Beanbag. Increasing numbers of Graduates entering Tutoring can only be good for Parents, no matter how they find them.

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What happens if Schools close for Swine Flu Jon 28 July

More than 1,000 schools in Britain have recorded cases of swine flu, and more than 60 per cent of infections have been in children and teenagers.

So I read with interest an article in today's Times, saying that the BBC could be forced to clear its schedules to make way for educational programming if a swine flu pandemic shuts schools, piping lessons straight into pupils’ living rooms.

Ministers had considered using the internet to teach pupils at home but the television was considered more effective as not everyone has access to broadband. Broadband usage statistics indicate that 64% of the UK population has fast internet access, so I guess television broadcasting makes more sense, although I see no reason why the programmes could not be made available on YouTube at the same time.

The BBC however are fighting against this proposal, as “taking control of the schedule would be tantamount to taking control of the BBC. It has never happened. To do so would destroy our reputation around the world as an impartial broadcaster.” Really? We are talking about educational programming here, are we not?

Maybe the BBC would like some feedback from someone who pays their License Fee every year. Would I like my children to be educated if Schools have to be closed down because of a pandemic – a resounding yes! If it means that we have to miss an episode of Cash In The Attic then so be it. My children were unavailable for comment….

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Changes to Beanbag Matt 05 May

If you've recently logged into Beanbag you'll see we've made quite a few changes and I thought I'd just take a minute to explain why.

Some time ago it became apparent that Beanbag was being used by children as well as the parents we had expected to use it. This brings with it certain legal responsibilities in this day and age and as such we sought the advice of a former Avon and Somerset police officer who now works for David Niven Associates to audit the site and make recommendations on how best we could proceed.

These recommendations have now been implemented throughout the site and while we have done our best to ensure the changes are as painless as possible they will at least initially place an additional burden on our members as far as updating profiles. Hopefully this is very straightforward but if you do have any feedback please feel free to contact me (help@beanbaglearning.com).

Some of the changes we have made were also requested by our members and in particular the ability for tutors to identify themselves as CRB checked in their profiles and to be searched via this criteria as well should improve the Beanbag experience for all concerned.

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Safer Internet Day Matt 10 February

February 10th is Safer Internet Day an annual event (since 2004) thats promotes safe and responsible internet use in more than 50 countries worldwide.

As a part of this a series of workshops organised by Bristol Safeguarding Children Board, the South West Grid for Learning and Avon and Somerset Constabulary aims to educate parents of the risks children and young people can face on-line and how best to help deal with them.

The first workshop takes place at Monks Park School in Horfield (my old school!) and then take place throughout Bristol.

If you are not based in Bristol or if you can't make any of the workshops the South West Grid for Learning Trust have a download section with useful e-safety resources on their website which is well worth checking out.

The workshop identifies 11 golden rules for safe use of the internet and they are good. common sense guidelines rather than some of the scare mongering that takes place in the press.

Golden Rules' for safe use of the internet include:

Ground rules

    * keep information private - think, would I tell this to a stranger?
    * agree rules about meeting online ‘friends’ in real life
    * generally - if not acceptable in real life it shouldn’t be acceptable on line

Online safety

    * anti-virus and parental monitoring systems
    * online safety guides
    * activate security and privacy settings

Location

    * internet access should be in a family room, rather than a bedroom
    * be aware that devices such as gaming consoles or mobile phones can access the internet or via a neighbour’s wireless network

Dialogue

    * share the experience
    * get your children to teach you - this is better than any course you can go on
    * ensure they are happy to talk to you if they have a problem or feel uncomfortable

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