How do I choose a teacher?
How to Choose a Tutor: The Ultimate Teacher Selection Guide
Choosing a tutor can be a difficult decision. You want to find a great teacher and have the best possible learning experience for you or your loved ones. So, how do you decide on a teacher? There are many criteria available to help you select the best teacher for you and your specific situation. This article covers a range of factors including: price, qualifications, university degrees, teaching qualifications and credentials, experience, and company size, to help you come to the right decision.
Price
People say that ‘you get what you pay for,’ and ‘buy cheap, pay twice,’ but is this the case with teaching?
Are all lessons the same?
Price is usually a factor in making any kind of purchase decision, from broad beans to broadband. If you see a bottle of Coca Cola for sale at £/$/€1 in shop A and for sale at £/$/€2 in shop B, then there is no real decision to make. You will buy the cola from shop A. Similarly, when selecting a teacher, it can be tempting to pick based on price alone. However, not all teachers provide lessons at the same level or of the same quality. This means that you cannot simply select a tutor based on price, as you would with soft drinks. It would be more accurate to compare looking for a teacher with looking for a laptop. Can you buy a laptop for £/$/€200? Yes, probably, but is it going to be as good as one selling for £/$/€1,200? Clearly not! The same is very much true for teachers and teaching. Teachers charge vastly different prices, which are usually as a result of the qualifications and experience that we will subsequently summarise:
What are you paying for?
When you see the price of a product or service, it is usual to consider what it is you are paying for before making the decision whether you are willing to pay that price. Teachers and teaching is no different. So, what are you paying for exactly?
The teacher’s time in arranging, booking and scheduling the lesson.
Lesson planning, whether this is shared explicitly with the student or not, can be very time consuming.
Creation of resources and materials or adopting these from existing sources such as text books (which the teacher must also purchase).
A contribution towards the supplies and equipment costs (e.g. internet, headphones, pens, paper etc.)
Teaching the actual lesson itself.
Feedback, debriefing, follow-up or setting homework (as and when required).
Marking any homework (when set) and returning it to the student on time.
You may not have realised, or even considered, that all of these different factors go into teaching a single lesson. However, when you take this into account, the rate you are paying a teacher is not actually what the teacher themselves really earns per hour. The amount of time it takes to do all of these out of classroom activities various hugely, but I estimate on average it would be around one hour per class – which effectively halves a teacher’s hourly rate of pay. This means that the lesson is not quite as ‘expensive’ as it may first look.
University degrees
Qualifications are probably the easiest way to work out work how good a teacher is likely to be but there is considerably more to think about and consider as I will explain. Let us begin by saying is that having a degree does not necessarily make you a good teacher. The first thing to consider then is university education and degrees.
Undergraduate degrees
While a it may not guarantee excellent communication skills, having a degree shows you that the teacher has some level of intelligence and has met the requirements to pass a degree. This is essentially telling you that they are themselves a successful learner. It is also worth considering the grade, course and university to more accurately assess your teachers’ qualifications and how relevant or impressive they actually are. While all three of these are factors are useful indicators, the grade received reveals much more about their effort, intelligence and academic aptitude.
Postgraduate degrees
A postgraduate degree is perhaps a better indicator of intelligence, or indeed academic aptitude, as it is more work at a higher level and requires initiate and (self) funding. This is particularly important if you are looking for help with academic English, course work or research papers. For example, a teacher who has themselves completed qualitative research at Master’s level is going to understand your research paper better than someone who has never conducted any research themselves. A PhD indicates this even more so. Again, as with undergraduate degrees, grade classifications offer the best indicator of aptitude.
Teaching qualifications and credentials
Teaching qualifications are a very important consideration – if not the most important factor. Teaching qualifications are so important that they could be their own topic and separate article. It is important to note that not all teaching qualifications are the same. Some are better than others! There are many, many teaching qualifications out there provided by a range of companies and institutions (which also vary in price and quality). To help you through the quagmire of qualifications, I have arranged teaching qualifications into four tiers (with tier 4 being the worst and tier 1 being the best).
Tier 4 – Taster Courses – 120-hour TEFL/TESL/TESOL certificate
First of all, TEFL/TESL/TESOL all essentially mean the same thing. One is certainly NOT better than the other (as I explain in the article TEFL Terminology). These are very basic qualifications indeed. Essentially, they are just entry level qualifications which should be used as a way of helping people decide if teaching is right for them. These qualifications are easy to get and cheap (with some even costing under $20). Notably, many schools do not consider these types of qualifications to be adequate to get a job. Yes, 120 hours might seem like a lot at first but this is only 5 days! Does anyone really think you can learn to teach in this short timeframe? No, they don’t! Any teacher who only has this level of qualification has basically taken the easy options which signals: either they are not taking their career seriously, or they only view teaching as an ‘easy’ way to make some extra money.
Tier 3 – Initiate Teacher – CELTA or CertTESOL
Tier 3 qualifications are what most in the industry consider to the ‘minimum basic qualification’ to actually teach. Often, they are referred to as ‘initiating’ someone into teaching or simply as initial teacher training (ITT). For many, Tier 3 qualifications are the first ‘legitimate’ qualifications in the list. These qualifications have the benefit of being accredited (validated), rather than taught by, Cambridge University (CELTA) and Trinity College London (CertTESOL). However, these courses can be completed in as little as 4 weeks! Is four weeks really enough time to know everything you need about teaching? Most probably not! These qualifications are at least graded so you can get a sense of how well the teacher did on the course. All in all, they should be regarded as a good place to start, but a stepping stone or way-stage, rather than a complete qualification.
Tier 2 – Qualified teacher – PGCE or DELTA or DipTESOL
The next tier of qualifications is a significant jump from the previous two. These qualifications have the advantage of actually making you a ‘qualified’ teacher, particularly in the eyes of the British Council. There are different routes to this qualified teacher status (QTS), and each has their own advantages. The PGCE, Postgraduate Certificate in Education, is the UK (and internationally renowned) teaching qualification that enables you to teach in the UK and international schools. This is a difficult qualification that takes one year full-time to complete – and so it is not surprising it enjoys an excellent reputation. The DELTA is the next step up from Cambridge’s CELTA, and DipTESOL is Trinity’s equivalent offering. These qualifications can be completed in three to four months full-time. There is a debate over which qualification is best (clearly the PGCE in my opinion, not least due to its duration) – yet both do operate at postgraduate level. Crucially, these are substantial qualifications with a sizeable assessed teaching practice component, as well as written assignments. Again, these are also graded so can further be used to differentiate between teachers when looking for the very best.
Tier 1 – master teacher – MA tesol or MA Applied Linguistics
The highest level teaching qualification is without doubt a full Master’s degree, either the MA TESOL or an MA in Applied Linguistics. While the PGCE and DELTA are both at postgraduate level, they are far from full Master’s qualifications. The MA is a rigorous academic qualification that contains academic assignments, teaching practice and independent research. One of its strengths is that it is academic and explores practical and theoretical elements in detail. Several teachers opt to do a PGCE, DELTA or DipTESOL first, before doing the full MA, which can take them up to two years-full time to complete both qualifications. The key thing here is what having an MA signals. It signals a true dedicate to teaching, regarding it as a calling or career, rather than just a quick way to make money. The best of the best teachers can further be determined by their MA grades. Would you rather your teacher had 5 days, 4 weeks or 1-2 years teaching training? The answer is obvious and helps us to understand why prices for teachers vary so dramatically.
Experience
Qualifications are of course important, but it is qualifications combined with experience that helps make teachers truly stand out. Experience is usually measured in terms of years teaching – which further helps provide a quick way to compare teachers. However, experience covers a lot of different things and when you examine a teacher’s experience you should also consider the following factors:
Teaching years: How many total years teaching? How many full years teaching?
Age range: Have they taught your age range (or age range of your daughter, son, etc.) before?
Levels: Have they taught at your specific level before?
Institutions: Where have they taught? Language schools? Primary schools? Secondary schools? Universities?
Countries: Which countries have they taught in? Do they have experience of different nationality students?
Role/s: In what capacity where they working at the institution? Teacher? Lecturer? Manager or Director of Studies?
Duration: How long were they working for each organisation?
Career gaps: Are they a ‘career teacher’? Did they teach for a bit but then try something else or vice versa?
Here, experience is more subjective and it depends on what you are actually looking for in a teacher. Try and match what you are looking for with the teachers direct relevant experience whether that is in terms of age range, level, institutions or any other factor you consider to be important. For example, if you are looking for academic support with your university assignments, then a teacher who has taught in a university is likely a better fit (you might also select a teacher with a Master’s degree as this means they understand university and academic processes).
Company size
This is perhaps not the most obvious consideration – but one worth thinking about nevertheless. Just as you have the choice to buy your food from a supermarket that is part of a huge global chain, or a small independent food shop, you also have the same choice when it comes to teachers.
big companies
There is no shortage of big companies offering tuition. Some of these employee teachers directly while others operate a platform for teachers to teach on. The advantage of using a big company is having a trusted brand name and faith that it is not a scam. In exchange for this; however, the central consideration is that these companies exist to make money, from both students and teachers, depending on their respective business models. Some of the most well known platforms take between 15-40% of what you as a student ‘pays’ the teacher. That might sound like a lot – and that’s because it is! As a result, teachers sometimes inflate their prices to ensure they receive what they think they are worth (compensating for the huge fees these sites charge) and so your lesson can often end up being much more expensive than booking directly with a teacher or small organisation would have been.
small companies
Many teachers, fed up with huge multi-national companies or ‘middle men’ taking large amounts of their hard-earned pay, have set up their own organisation, such as we have here at Focus on Learning. Teachers still incur costs, having to pay to build a website and also having to pay for things like scheduling software, etc. – yet this allows them to retain more of the fruits of their own labour. Another real advantage, for both students and teachers, is that lessons can be freer and more creative (thereby arguably better) as a small company won’t force teachers to use their own in-house created materials, which can be low quality and don’t suit all learners. Things to consider before using a small company: What qualifications do their teachers have? What do their current, and previous, students say about them? If you are not quite sure it’s a good fit then book a trial lesson (this is of course true for any and all options). Small companies may well offer better value in the long term as they represent a better deal for teachers and students.