Blog « Beanbag

Tutorhub: Booking a tutor Jon 20 January

There was a time, indeed not so long ago, when finding a tutor presented parents with a real challenge. The internet has helped, with websites like Beanbag Learning simplifying the search for a tutor. We were left asking ourselves what more could we do to improve the way that tutoring works. Making the leap from face to face tutoring to online tutoring, still within your home, was an obvious next step.

This led us to launch Tutorhub, our online tutoring website. We've learned alot since we launched the website a year or so ago. Customers are telling us that they love:

Finding experienced tutors and arranging sessions whenever they want, often with very little notice.
Finding support in those subjects where local tutors just do not exist.
Using text based tutoring, very similar to Facebook Chat or MSN.

We always listen closely to our customers, and have introduced a series of extra things that people would really value, such as tutor reputation scores, notifications and most importantly the ability to contact a tutor and book a session, in the way that they might do with traditional face to face tutoring.

We are really pleased with Tutorhub, and very see it as the future of tutoring.

If you are interested, as a parent, student or tutor, why not visit us at Tutorhub.com.

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Our new online tutoring website Tutorhub.com in the news Jon 31 August

We launched tutorhub.com late in 2010, as the means for parents to find tutors online.

Online tutoring is in it's infancy in the UK, and we believe that demand will grow once parents, children and tutors understand how it works and start to appreciate the convenience of getting tutored over the internet.

We were very pleased to hear that the website had been nominated as a finalist for the 2011 Education Investor Awards, and has been covered by the press a number of times, including the article that appeared in today's Bristol Evening Post.

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Do I have to pay tax, as a private tutor? Jon 19 June

You may have seen in the press that private tutoring has been identified by HMRC as a profession that has scope for tax avoidance and evasion. The government aims to collect £7 billion during the course of this parliament through targeting tax evasion, avoidance and fraud, and will no doubt be focusing more resources in this area.

It has always been the case that when you earn money, you have to declare it for tax. Whether you are paid in cash or not, you must declare it. If HMRC find out that you have not declared income, on which tax is due, you may be charged interest and incur penalties on top of any tax bill. In mores serious cases, there is a risk of prosecution and imprisonment.

When you tutor there are some costs that you can offset against your income - these might include marketing and travel costs. There is plenty that you can find out on the HMRC website, but if you are in any case confused it is best to talk to an accountant about this.

If your only source of income is from tutoring, then you only pay tax if your income exceeds £7,475 (tax year 2011-12) - you will have to be doing a fair amount of tutoring to achieve this. If you are receiving a pension beware, this is treated as income, and tutoring income might take you over your personal tax allowance.

If you have another occupation, e.g. full time teaching, then there is a fair chance that you will have to pay tax.

If you are confused or need help, our recommendation would be to speak, in the first instance, to HMRC or see someone face to face in their local Tax Enquiry Centres, who will be able to provide advice for free. Accountants will provide valuable support, but will charge a fee for their time.

New tutors need to enter the business with their eyes open. Existing tutors who haven't been declaring their tutoring income need to come clean as soon as possible. Honest tutors, the vast majority of tutors we believe, have nothing to fear.

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Tutorhub: Spreading the good word Jon 18 May

Hello again! Just a quick blog post to let everyone know that our sister website Tutorhub.com was featured today by the Good Web Guide - the definitive guide to the best websites on the internet.

We have been amazed by how popular the website is proving to be amongst kids looking for homework help and our community of online tutors. It's a simple idea, a website where kids can ask homework questions and help each other out free of charge. For those that require some one to one help from a UK based and CRB checked tutor, Tutorhub provides the means for the kid and tutor to connect. Feedback from our customers is excellent, why not have a look at the website and see what all the fuss is about.

If you would like to read the Good Web Guide article, just click on this link.

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The secret of exam success Jon 21 April

I don't know about you, learning doesn't always come easy to me. I recall starting to revise for my GCSE exams and wondering why other kids do really well seemingly without trying, whereas for me it was a battle.

There is great debate about nature versus nurture in education. But is academic success due to some special chromosomes or is it just down to the way that you are taught to learn, and the effort you put in?

An article by Matthew Syed has shed some light on this conundrum. He has found that many studies have discovered that top performers learn no faster than those who reach lower levels of attainment - hour after hour, they improve at almost identical rates. The difference is simply that high achievers practise for more hours. This was a Eureka moment for me, so it's about the hard yards - structured and regular revision is the secret.

Syed has also found further research which has shown that when students seem to possess a particular gift, it is often because they have been given extra tuition at home, by tutors or parents.

This is not to deny that some kids start out better than others - it is merely to suggest that the starting point is not particularly relevant. So many kids develop a mindset that rationalise poor exam performance with a feeling that they are somehow not bright enough. This mindset has a way of becoming self-fulfilling, as it leads to a lowering of expectations.

So with so many kids revising for their summer exams, what words of wisdom can we impart? Well, it is as simple as giving plenty of time for revision, covering the subjects as many times as you feel necessary until you feel that you know the answers. If you don't understand something, you can always find a tutor on Beanbag Learning or get online help from our sister website Tutorhub. Good words of advice, I think.

Best of luck kids.

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Easter revision madness Jon 10 April

The Easter holiday revision period is upon us, and thousands of kids across the UK are facing weeks being stuck inside concentrating on their maths and english lit, whilst their siblings are out playing in the sun.

Almost all of us will remember the panic, when you realise that the exams are a matter of weeks away. The feeling that you haven't done enough, and maybe failing to meet the expectations of your parents and teachers. No matter how you look at it, it's a stressful time.

So what is the best advice? As someone who has been through the exam mill countless times, I think that it's all about preparation. Come up with a revision timetable - with dates and times. Try and block out a couple of hours in the morning, afternoon and evening, and stick to it. Don't forget to have fun too, you have got to unwind.

What to do if you don't understand something. Well first thing is not to panic. Make a note of what you don't understand and move on, don't let it divert you from revising the rest of what you need to learn. Come back to it later, you may feel like asking friends and family first, maybe even your teacher. There are alternatives of course, you can get help from a tutor on this website, or you could get help online from our sister website Tutorhub.com.

No-one has ever said that Easter Eggs don't help revision, so our advice here is to eat as many as you can :)

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Vetting & Barring: the end is nigh Jon 06 February

Okay, so maybe not a surprise given the scale and scope of the public sector cuts being planned, that something costing £80m would receive particular attention. But it was with some sadness that read that the Vetting & Barring scheme and the ISA (Independent Safeguarding Authority) would be 'scaled back'.

Formal confirmation is due in the Freedom Bill, but it seems probable that the ISA is to be merged with the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB). So where does this leave parents, as consumers and tutors?

Parents will be disappointed that there will not be a independent website where they can check tutors online, and that noone will be required to be forever vigilant, constantly updating people's suitability to work with children, when circumstances change. As I see it the problem with CRB checks is that they only reflect the CRB's information on an individual at a point in time, whereas an ISA check was a much better control as it was similar to a driving license.

As tutors, maybe you are not concerned either way, as the industry is unregulated and there is no requirement per se for private tutors to be CRB checked in any case. The cost of a CRB check is normally met by employers, and you would expect this not to change with the ISA.

What do I think? Well on one hand I was concerned about the whole subjective review process and power seemingly in the hands of a team of bureaucrats. On the other hand, I think that we may have 'thrown the baby out with the bathwater' - does child safety come with a price? Would the ISA have stopped Ian Huntley, if you think like me that it would, then surely we will have got the balance between personal freedom and child safety wrong.

The devil will be in the detail, and maybe the Freedom Bill will keep some of the features of ISA registration, in which case I may feel much more comfortable about it.

Only time will tell.

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Online Learning: The Pros Jon 13 January

Whenever man makes some great advancement in life, it always seems to be down to a bit of technological boffinry. The wheel, internal combustion engine, the Sinclair C5 .... alright we can't get it right every time.

: The Sinclair C5...oops.

Either way, it's technological innovation that seems to be the only thing capable of perpetual motion. It goes without saying that technology touches every part of life and education isn't immune. But that's a good thing right? Well, yes and no.

The rise of the internet, iPhones and VLE's could signal and end to school-centric learning and the start of a kind of do-it-yourself education where you glean information from several sources, literally allowing you to take part in lessons whenever and wherever you want. So let's just look at the benefits of online learning brings to education.

Leaving aside VLE's and looking to other online options, there's the obvious things - the convenience of of learning at leisure is unmatched; it is possible to schedule in learning when it suits, allowing you to access all the resources you need from home, the palm or the pocket.

Turning to online tutoring, the stand-out benefit is that it's cheaper - normal private tutoring services need to be structured, usually over hour-long blocks. With an online tutor, though many sites require you to sign up for a month or more, the overall cost can be considerably less.

This is the case with Tutorhub, our online tutoring and homework help website. It's affordable because tutoring takes place using our micro-tutoring system; where students pay on a minute by minute basis as they work through problems with their tutors. Once the hurdle has been overcome, the session is ended, there are no further costs.

But for me, the biggest advantage of online learning and online tutoring is that it fills the inevitable gap lef when students can't keep up in the classroom. The stigma attached to falling behind, admitting it and asking for help in front of the class cannot be underestimated; kids are acutely aware of the peers from an early age.

An hour spent on Facebook could easily be the reward for an hour spent on revision, homework help or online tutoring websites in order to give kids the little extra help they need.

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Here we snow again... Joe 02 December

Sorry about that.

There's nothing quite like the look on a childs face when, bleary eyed, they throw open the curtains, wipe the mist from a cloudy window and peer out into a world under a white blanket.

And realise it's a school day.

Yep, winter has arrived in earnest for most of the UK, closing schools across the country and rendering the public transport network a whimpering mess.

For children, a day off school at the mercy of the snow is a chance for fun and frolic, but for parents it can be a logistical nightmare as last minute phone calls are put in to childminders, helpful neighbours are drafted in to watch the kids and we all battle our way into work.

Serious school hours are lost to the good old British weather every year, potentially leaving the less confident or not-quite-up-to-speed-yet kids at a disadvantage. The internet is a fantastic resource for parents who want to keep their kids in the education loop after a long day spent organising pincer movements on rival snowball gangs.

When schools close communication lines freeze and confusion is king; parents can be left with the possibility of a child being at home indefinitely. Scary thought. So how do we get homework help when schools have fallen foul to the white stuff? Let's face it, you're going to have to dress up learning as anything but to get kids interested on a snow day.

I think in the future we'll see an increasing role for VLE's - upwards of 10% of schools have implemented systems already and are using them to supplement learning at school and at home; teachers can set work and answer questions through an online portal.

At the moment though, parents can make use of sites that use interaction and games to make learning fun like the BBC Learningpages (which are well worth a look) and more long-term help sites like themathsfactor.com, which offer paid for tutoring over a longer period of time.

Of course there's Tutorhub, too, lest we forget.

I'm not saying we should transform our homes into mobile classrooms every time the weather takes a turn for the worse, but a little learning never hurt snowbody.

Must stop doing that.

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Targeting 'the teachable moment' Joe 23 November

“When the timing is right, the ability to learn a particular task will be possible. This is referred to as a ‘teachable moment.’ It is important to keep in mind that unless the time is right, learning will not occur. Hence, it is important to repeat important points whenever possible so that when a student’s teachable moment occurs, s/he can benefit from the knowledge.” Havighurst, Robert.

Looking at the definition from Havighurst’s Human Development and Education, you can be forgiven for thinking that teachers might want to take a scatter-gun approach to lessons – peppering pupils with information over and again in the hope of catching a few of them at their teachable moment.

Looking back, I reckon nearly all of us have fond memories of a particular schoolteacher, one who really touched us with their teaching. Some just had the knack; the Miss Honey type characters that spoke to our inner soul, lacing every lesson with beads of inspiration. Teachers like that are a rare breed and always have been. Under their wing, every lesson is one long teachable moment.

So with Ofsted’s annual report just published, teaching standards in our schools are under the microscope once more after inspectors labelled some lessons ‘dull and uninspiring’. The report also noted that schools where teaching was weak were prone to bad behaviour.

There’s some debate over how to read this year’s figures however, which are not directly comparible to those of last year due to a change in tactics by the inspection team. This year there was no re-inspection for schools that rated good or outstanding in the last round, meaning those that were inspected are likely to be lower performing schools.

Tomorrow Michael Gove will unveil his much anticipated white paper on school reform, and it’s thought teacher training will face its biggest shake-up for a generation as training is moved away from universities and into schools. Gove has already said teachers in free schools won’t need formal qualifications. (Is this really the way to improve the quality of teaching, already found wanting by the Ofsted report?)

We want to know how you feel about standards of teaching you’ve experienced: Do you think an academic qualification is a necessity in order to give prospective teachers a solid grasp of their subject, or will in-house, on the job training suffice?

Let us know how you feel in the comment box below.

At Tutorhub, we’re doing what we can to help kids out when they’re stuck. With an assignment due in the morning and no-one around to help, Tutorhub steps in to guide them through at the time when they need to learn; at the time when they want to learn.

The teachable moment.

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Popular scheme falls victim to the cuts Joe 17 November

Pretty sad to hear this week that students' automatic right to one-to-one tuition has ended, after funding was pulled by the coalition government.

In January we blogged about the Institute of London's initial research into the reading and numeracy programmes which were to be rolled out nationwide in 2011

Since then the programmes have gone on to produce some pretty fantastic results. The Every Child a Chance trust, the organisation behind the schemes, are working on a report that builds on research already carried out into its successes so far.

Research shows that children who undertook one-to-one tuition in reading saw benefits of up to 2 years advancement in their reading age after 40 hours of personal coaching.

On the numeracy programme, just 20 hours of individual tuition returned gains of up to 14 months in some children.

The decision to end the schemes, known as Every Child a Reader and Every Child Counts, will come as a disappointing blow to parents who were experiencing first hand the benefits of one-to-one tuition; a glance at user comments on the BBC News story shows just how popular the programmes were.

We can only wonder where next the axe will fall...

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Tutorhub featured by BBC Joe 15 November

Tutorhub, our new website designed to make finding homework help a darn sight easier, has just been featured on BBC Radio Bristol's drive-time show.

Spreading the word is always a challenge for new businesses, so we were very pleased when we received the call on Friday from the BBC in Bristol. They had heard about the website and asked us to come in and tell their radio listeners all about it.

The BBC were very interested in the issues of finding homework help and getting support from tutors. They were curious about the technology we were using and how quickly homework questions would be answered.

If you have five minutes to spare and would like to listen to the interview, do so by following this link.

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Introducing: Micro-tutoring Joe 15 November

Cast your mind back to that time when you're sat there, struggling with a concept you just don’t get. It could have been percentages, or it could have been reflection/refraction. You've reached the point where your brain has started to fog and frustration is creeping in. Just at that moment, a teacher, a parent or a friend says, 'are you ok?’.

You mumble a few words. It's obvious what's going on, so they sit down and quietly take you through it. One-to-one. Step by step. It doesn't take long, but the fog clears and the magic words appear on your lips, 'Ah-ha!'. You get it, the eureka moment, it 'clicks'.

But how many times did the teacher, the parent or the friend not step in, leaving you with a legacy of frustration and reduced confidence? How many times did you refuse help so you didn't look stupid in front of the class?

And think of the converse for a moment. Have you ever sat there whilst a teacher or a tutor continues to explain something when you’ve already 'got it', simply because the class isn't finished yet or because the tutoring session lasts an hour and it's only 20 minutes in? Not quite as frustrating, but almost.

In an ideal world, you'd get help only when you needed it. A cupboard at home, full of tutors who can step out, explain things and then disappear the moment it 'clicks'.

OK, so tutors won't live in a cupboard, and it would have to be a pretty large one to accommodate a tutor for every subject, but many parents naturally understand how quickly frustration can turn into low confidence and low achievement, so back in the real world, they find tutors to re-teach what's already been covered in class and hope that it 'clicks'.

It would take too long and cost too much to cover every subject, so the focus is on trickier subjects, like maths and science. The tutoring is generally delivered in multiple one-hour sessions, because otherwise it's not worth it for either parent or tutor. No mention here of the person who gets the tutoring.

Why? In financial terms, it's fairly obvious why the tutor might want longer, more frequent sessions but what about the parent? The answer lies in the effort associated with getting a new tutor; the time taken to find one, the time taken to evaluate whether they're any good or not, the emotional cost of inviting someone new into your home. Think in these terms and it's equally obvious why parents don't want to repeatedly find tutors, just when their children need help. In economic terms, parents are satisficing.

But take away the effort of searching for a tutor, add in a simple way to evaluate them*, make it economic for tutors to deliver tuition in small bursts and you have a solution that works for everyone: students (who only get taught when they need it), parents (because it's more cost effective and less time consuming) and tutors (because it creates a big new market).

We do this using a combination of real time web technology and a fundamentally different process. Call it micro-tutoring. Grameen Bank changed the way credit was evaluated to make it economic to lend in small amounts and thereby created micro-finance. Twitter created micro-blogging using real time web technology to make it effective to deliver a stream of relevant, personal, real-time information.

Tutorhub changes the way we search for tutors, evaluate tutors and deliver tutoring - making it efficient to deliver tutoring in small bursts, just when it's needed.

Thus the micro-tutoring market is born.

* parents have no way of evaluating whether a tutor is any good or not. They rely on clues: is he/she in demand, are they recommended etc. In other words, they rely on a phenomenon known as social proof. Our recommendation algorithm delivers a superior form of evaluation.

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Tutorhub.com is born! Jon 07 October

Like expectant parents we have been preparing for the big day when our new website tutorhub would be launched. Well that day has arrived and we are proud, excited and looking forward to the challenges that lie ahead.

Tutorhub is the natural evolution of this website. In beanbag we have created a really useful website that connect parents and tutors - (certainly to our knowledge) the only free tutoring directory website in the UK. On talking to parents we realised that taking beanbag to the next level it would mean finding a tutor when you needed it - on demand.

Tutorhub provides parents the means to contact a tutor precisely when it's needed - at the teachable moment, e.g. when homework is due the next day. It also provides a link back to beanbag, so that if face to face tutoring is what's really required then parents can choose from tutors in their locality.

It's early days for Tutorhub, and we will be working with parents, children and tutors to get the website ship-shape. If you have any feedback or would like to be part of this, please contact me direct at jonellis@beanbaglearning.com.

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The finishing line draws nearer Jon 23 September

It's noses to the grindstone here at Beanbag, as we put the finishing touches to our new online tutoring service tutorhub.com, which we will be launching shortly.

Last week we were filming a homepage video at Central Studios, in Bristol using a tutorhub tutor and one of our students. We are really pleased with the results, it gets over the message nicely.

Tutorhub.com remains in private beta at the moment, so it's not yet open to the general public, but we have just started a new blog, where we will be posting more progress updates.

Finally, we were delighted to see an article about tutorhub.com appear in the Bristol Evening Post this week. Exciting times here at Beanbag Learning!

6 Comments

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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