Guide for parents · September 2026
Four causes, and only two respond to paying someone
Four causes of school difficulty look identical from home and only one responds to tutoring. How to tell them apart before you spend anything.
The question underneath the question
Almost nobody arrives at this question abstractly. Something happened: a report, a test result, a comment at parents' evening, or a Tuesday night that ended badly. The instinct is to fix it by buying help, and that instinct is reasonable.
But "does my child need a tutor" is really two questions wearing one coat. Is something wrong, and is a tutor the right response to the particular thing that is wrong. A lot of money is spent because the second question never gets asked separately from the first.
Four causes that look exactly the same from the kitchen table
Sit at your own table and watch a difficult homework session. What you see — slowness, frustration, avoidance, wrong answers — is the same whichever of these is happening. They are not the same thing at all.
| Cause | The tell | Does a tutor help |
|---|---|---|
| A missing earlier skill | Fine until a specific kind of question appears | Yes, if they work backwards to find it |
| Fluency and working memory | Right method, slow, small errors under load | Partly; daily repetition matters more |
| Attention and organisation | Loses the sheet, forgets the deadline, starts at ten o'clock | No — this needs systems, not teaching |
| Confidence and avoidance | Will not begin; says they are stupid before trying | Often yes, and better than anything else |
Two of these four respond well to paying somebody. The other two respond to changes that cost nothing, and buying tutoring for them adds an obligation on top of a child who is already overloaded.
The cheapest diagnostic you have
Compare how long homework takes now with how long it took in September. It is a better signal than any grade, it is free, and you already have the data.
If the same twenty-minute task now takes an hour, something has changed, and the direction of travel matters more than the absolute level. Add two more observations. Can your child explain a method out loud without looking at the book? And if you change one number in a question they just completed, can they still begin?
A child who can explain and can restart understands. A child who can reproduce but cannot explain has learned a procedure and will fall over the moment the format shifts.
Finding whether there is an actual gap
For maths specifically, you can stop guessing. Pobbi's learning check is twenty questions drawn from a bank covering eighteen skills, from place value up to solving a two-step equation, pitched at Year 5 to Year 9. It takes about twelve minutes, it is free, and it does not ask for a card.
The part that answers this page's question is what happens on a wrong answer. The check goes down rather than on. Miss the sum of a third and a quarter and it examines lowest common multiples, equivalent fractions and adding fractions that already share a denominator. If those three come back secure, the fraction sum is a slip. If one of them does not, you have found the thing, and you now know whether there is something to teach.
Every skill is reported as secure at eighty per cent or above, still being practised between fifty and seventy-nine, or still being learned below fifty. A page of secure skills with one hole in it is a very different situation from a page where half the foundation is amber, and they call for different decisions.
The check covers maths. For English, science and the rest, the same logic applies but you are working from a returned piece of work and a conversation with the teacher instead.
When the answer is yes, book it
Four situations where a person is clearly the right spend, and where waiting costs more than the fees.
Your child has stopped trying. Refusal, tears before the first question, or a settled belief that they cannot do this subject — that is not fixed by more practice, and often not by you, because you are their parent. An adult from outside, patient and consistent, is the intervention.
There is an identified need being supported by somebody trained in it. There is an exam close enough that technique, command words and timing are the gap rather than knowledge. Or your child learns by talking and simply does better with a person in the room, which is a real difference and not a weakness.
When the answer is not yet
When you cannot yet name the missing skill. When the problem is organisation rather than understanding, because a tutor cannot make a fifteen-year-old write things in a planner. When the child is tired rather than stuck. And when homework is the whole of the evidence — plenty of homework is badly set, and a child struggling with it may be struggling with the task rather than the topic.
Questions parents ask themselves
Everyone else seems to have a tutor. Are we behind?
Tutoring is far more common in some areas than others, and its visibility has little to do with whether your particular child needs it. Decide from your evidence, not from the school gate.
Should I wait for the next report?
A report arrives after a term of evidence has already piled up. The signals at home are earlier and you can act on them now.
What if I get it wrong?
Almost every version of this decision is reversible. The expensive mistake is not choosing wrongly; it is paying for a year of something without ever defining what success would look like.
How long should I give something before deciding?
Set the window in advance — a few weeks — and write down what would count as improvement. Fewer hints on similar questions, the same mistake stopping, or homework taking less time.