Guide for parents · September 2026
The three products parents call an online tutor
Online tutoring means three different products. What live video lessons do well, where they fall down, and how to choose between them at home.
"Online tutor" describes three different things
Before comparing anything, it helps to notice that the phrase covers three products that share almost nothing except a screen.
The first is a live one-to-one lesson over video with a named person, at a set time, usually with a shared whiteboard. The second is a small online class, cheaper, where your child is one of six or twelve and cannot be watched closely. The third is not a tutor at all: an app, a question bank or a chatbot sold with the word tutor in its name, available whenever your child opens it.
Parents who search for an online tutor alternative are usually comparing the first against the third without realising that the middle option exists, or that the third is what they have already tried and abandoned.
What the screen adds, and what it removes
| Choice of teacher | National, not local | Chosen for you | Not applicable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fits around your evening | A fixed slot, but no travel | Fixed and shared | Whenever the child is ready |
| Notices a disengaged child | Sometimes | Rarely | Only through what they answer |
| Sees the working on paper | Only if you show it | No | Only what is typed |
| Good for a genuinely new idea | Yes | Yes | Weaker |
The row about working on paper is the one that quietly matters. A great deal of teaching is done by looking at what a child wrote and spotting where the reasoning turned. Over video, unless somebody holds an exercise book up to a camera, that evidence is gone and the teacher is working from answers alone.
Where live video genuinely beats everything else
Two situations, and they are worth being clear about.
If you live somewhere with few tutors, online removes the travel radius entirely. A family in rural Wales or the Highlands can reach a specialist who would never have been available locally, and for a narrow need — a particular subject, a particular exam board, a particular language — that is a real gain, not a compromise.
The second is explanation. When a child meets an idea that is new rather than shaky — the first time negative numbers behave strangely, the first time a letter stands for a number — somebody talking them through it, adjusting as they respond, is hard to beat. That is teaching, and no amount of practice substitutes for it.
Where it is the wrong purchase
A weekly slot cannot supply repetition, and repetition is what moves a method from "I followed that" to "I can do that". A child who understands everything in the session and has forgotten it by Thursday does not need a better tutor; they need something happening on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
The other wrong purchase is buying explanation when you needed diagnosis. If nobody knows which earlier skill is missing, a live lesson will be spent on whatever was set this week, and the actual hole stays where it is.
What Pobbi covers, without overstating it
Pobbi is software, not a person, and there is nobody on the other end. The maths learning check runs about twelve minutes, costs nothing, asks for no card, and puts twenty questions across eighteen skills spanning Year 5 to Year 9 — place value, times tables, negative numbers, the fractions sequence, percentages, ratio and early algebra.
Its useful trick is that a wrong answer sends it backwards. Fail to solve a two-step equation and it checks whether simplifying an expression and substituting a value are secure first, because if either is not, the equation was never the problem. Practice then responds to a mistake with a hint, a smaller question or a comparison rather than the finished answer, and the parent view says in plain words what is repeating.
What it does not do: talk to your child, teach a new idea from scratch the way a person can, cover any nation's curriculum in full, or prepare anyone for a specific exam paper.
Questions about learning online
My child says they concentrate better online. Is that real?
Sometimes, particularly for children who find a stranger in the house uncomfortable. It is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing, and it is also worth checking against what actually gets done.
How do I tell whether an online tutor is any good?
Ask them, after two sessions, what they think the underlying gap is. A good one will have a specific answer. A vague one is working session to session on whatever arrived from school.
Is a small group class a false economy?
Not necessarily. For a child who is broadly fine and needs structure and pace, a group can be good value. For a child with a specific hole, the group moves at somebody else's speed.
Can this replace live teaching entirely?
For consistent practice and for finding the gap, often. For a child who needs to be talked through something new, for exam technique, or for a diagnosed learning need, no, and a teacher or tutor is the better spend.