A chat about tutoring: What makes a great tutor?

When I started tutoring fourteen and a half years ago, I certainly didn’t imagine that one day I would be running a tutoring business with a team of tutors, developing a franchise and thinking quite so deeply about what makes somebody good at this job.Over those years, I’ve worked with a lot of children, spoken to a lot of parents and worked alongside a lot of tutors.And one thing I have become increasingly convinced of is this:Knowing a subject doesn’t automatically make somebody a great tutor.Of course, subject knowledge matters. If you are helping a child with algebra, you need to understand algebra. If you’re supporting a GCSE student with Macbeth, you need to know the text.But tutoring is about what happens when that knowledge meets the individual child sitting in front of you.And that requires something more.