BlogStudyThe Top 10 Important Factors to Consider When Choosing a Tutoring Company in Queensland

The Top 10 Important Factors to Consider When Choosing a Tutoring Company in Queensland

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With a wide range of support options available, it can be challenging to determine which tutoring support is the perfect fit for your child and their needs in Queensland.

To assist you in making an informed decision, leveraging our extensive experience of more than 10 years supporting over 8,000 families across Australia, we have compiled a step-by-step guide. This guide outlines the top 10 factors you should consider when selecting personalised tutoring support, along with their significance.

#1: Pricing
#2: Tutor Recruitment Process
#3: Tutor Training and Certification
#4: Curriculum Aligned Tutoring Resources
#5: Diagnostic Testing & Practice Exams
#6: Print & Online Tutoring Resources for Students
#7: Student Progress Reporting
#8: Holistic Study, Exam & Wellbeing Support
#9: Customer Support Team and Feedback Process
#10: Proven Track Record Supporting Students

Factor #1: Pricing

One of the things we’re big believers of at Art of Smart Education is affordable pricing that delivers INCREDIBLE value for QLD tutoring!

So you can rest assured that you’re getting great pricing and amazing value, we’ve gone out and conducted a market survey of the Top 10 tutoring organisations across QLD to compare pricing and service delivery for you.

We’ve anonymised it so we don’t call any specific organisation out, while at the same time being able to provide you with confidence around what 1 on 1 QLD tutoring costs as of 2023 and how different rates compare!

Tutoring Prices in Queensland 2023

OrganisationPricing
Art of Smart EducationP-10: $69-76 p/h
11-12: $79-87 p/h
Company #1$85-87.50 p/h
Company #2$76 p/h
Company #3$85 p/h [Online Only]
Company #4$75 p/h
Company #5$59-74 p/h
Company #6$60-95 p/h
Company #7$70-80 p/h [Online Only]
Company #8$60-90 p/h [Online Only]
Company #9$65 [Online Only]
Average Hourly Rate for 1 on 1 Tutoring$70.5-80.85 per hour 

As you can see from the above, our 1 on 1 QLD tutoring at Art of Smart Education is incredibly competitively priced 😊

Importantly, we have no booking fees, no contracts, and if you provide 24 hours notice you can cancel a booked lesson with no charge!

Review #1

Factor #2: Tutor Recruitment Process

The calibre of your tutor significantly influences the quality of your learning experience and the outcomes you achieve.

The recruitment process implemented by a tutoring company plays a crucial role in determining the quality of your tutor. This process ensures that tutors possess not only the necessary academic qualifications but also excel as exceptional communicators and role models.

Below is an outline of our tutor recruitment process, here at Art of Smart, along with a comparison of how other tutoring companies typically hire their tutors:

Art of Smart EducationOther Tutoring Organisations
We receive over 4,000 applications from tutors each year and only 1 in 8 pass our high standards to become a tutor with us.

All Art of Smart tutors undergo a comprehensive recruitment process including a 45-minute interview where they are required to teach us via delivering a lesson which we use to assess communication & teaching skills.
Generally have no requirement for a tutor to first teach and deliver a lesson to determine their communication & teaching skills.

Tutors are recruited largely on the basis of their prior academic record only with little evidence of teaching or role model capacity.

Receive a much smaller number of applications, and have less quality to therefore choose from.

Review #2

Good questions to ask:
  • Do you request your tutors to deliver a practice lesson and teach you beforehand, allowing you to directly observe their teaching style and communication skills?
  • On an annual basis, how many individuals apply for tutoring positions with your organisation? And out of those applicants, how many do you ultimately hire?

Factor #3: Tutor Training and Certification

Even if someone has an impressive academic background and excellent communication skills, it does not automatically make them an effective tutor.

This is why tutor training, certification, and ongoing support are of utmost importance. These measures ensure that a tutor possesses the necessary teaching skills and continues to improve and grow over time.

Art of Smart EducationOther Tutoring Organisations
To start supporting students, our tutors must complete our Tutor Certification process designed by qualified teachers.

This training process ensures they are equipped with the key skills they need to teach the specific subjects they specialise in. 

We then provide ongoing training and support for tutors throughout the year via weekly resources and training conferences.
Most tutoring organisations have very little training in place for tutors.

If they do, they tend to focus on administrative processes only, with very little on developing tutors’ teaching practices.

If training is delivered it is generally one-off with little ongoing support for tutors who are left to their own devices.

Review #3

Good questions to ask:
  • Does the training program provided include training on how to teach specific subjects? 
  • Has the training program been designed working with qualified teachers and experts?
  • What does ongoing training look like?

Factor #4: Curriculum Aligned Tutoring Resources

This factor holds immense significance and often accounts for the disparity in pricing between different one-on-one tutoring organisations, including private tutoring.

If you do not have access to well-defined curriculum-aligned resources that comprehensively cover the relevant syllabus, including clear explanations, worked examples, sample essays, and practice questions, the quality of the tutoring session can be significantly compromised. This can lead to:

  1. Inaccurate material being covered due to changes in the curriculum and syllabus.
  2. Key areas of the syllabus being overlooked, which can have a negative impact on assessment and exam results.
  3. Lack of clear structure in lessons, resulting in wasted time.
  4. Insufficient opportunities for students to apply and practice their learning throughout the week, impeding their progress.
  5. Absence of supplementary materials for students to reference and revise what was covered during the week, hindering the consolidation of their learning.
Art of Smart EducationOther Tutoring Organisations
We are very unique in Australia in our provision of comprehensive tutoring resources for P-12 for all tutors and students.

These tutoring resource books are aligned to state and national curriculums and have been designed by qualified teachers.

They provide tutors & students with week by week lesson materials, notes, worked examples, practice questions and more for every week of the school year.

This ensures that students receive incredibly high-quality tutoring support, with a wealth of resources to access and use.
Most tutoring organisations provide no tutoring & learning resources to their tutors.

Instead, tutors are left to find their own resources from when they were perhaps a student, or from online searches they have conducted.

This impacts the quality of the tutoring delivered significantly and impacts a student’s ability to build their knowledge and practise applying it with practice questions.

If resources are provided, they tend to be resources that are available online that have been collated, rather than being intentionally designed to support students’ learning in tutoring.

Review #4

Good questions to ask:
  • Do you provide tutoring resources for tutors and students?
  • Are they simply resources collated in an online library from around the internet or have they been custom designed?
  • Who designed and created the teaching resources?
  • What do they cover? Do they include key lesson notes, worked examples, sample essays and responses, and practice questions? 
  • How do students get access to these? Is it online? Do they get printed materials?

Factor #5: Diagnostic Testing & Practice Exams

In tutoring, it is crucial to prioritise the right aspects; otherwise, you may end up wasting a significant amount of money and, more importantly, time by focusing on areas that do not truly benefit the student.

Furthermore, incorporating practice questions and exams is essential. They serve as a means for students to practice and enhance their exam technique, while also serving as a valuable tool to measure progress.

Ultimately, since school grades are largely influenced by exams, tutoring that does not include exam practice yields limited results, especially when students grapple with exam pressure and anxiety.

Art of Smart EducationOther Tutoring Organisations
Our team of qualified teachers have designed K-6 curriculum aligned diagnostic assessments across Maths & English to help identify the exact areas primary school students need support.

Parents receive a personalised report that shows the exact curriculum outcome areas they need to be addressed, and areas of strength.
Usually, K-6 diagnostic assessments are typically only available at physical tutoring colleges with campus locations.

Most 1 on 1 home tutoring doesn’t provide diagnostic testing for students.

Review #5

Good questions to ask:
  • For P-6 do you have diagnostic assessments with reports to identify where my child needs to focus? 
  • Do you provide end of term exams and end of year exams for students to use to practise with and measure progress? Are these ones your team created, or ones found online?
  • Do you provide unique practice exams, and review sessions to help Year 12 students develop their exam technique? Are these ones you have designed, or found online? 

Want to know the top public and private schools in Brisbane? Check out our research here. 

Factor #6: Print & Online Tutoring Resources for Students

When choosing a tutoring company, parents should prioritise those that offer comprehensive print AND online resources for students.

These resources provide clear explanations, worked examples, and practice questions aligned with the curriculum. They enable students to reinforce their understanding, apply their knowledge, and effectively review and revise important concepts independently.

Art of Smart EducationOther Tutoring Organisations
We make our tutoring resources available for students both as Printed Resource Books which we ship and deliver direct to a student’s home + also make it available 24/7 through our custom-designed learning app (desktop and mobile). 

We are the only organisation in Australia that ships printed resources books direct to students’ homes for 1 on 1 tutoring.
No other tutoring organisation provides printed resource books shipped to a student’s home.

Only 1-2 other tutoring organisations provide a specific online portal/app for accessing tutoring and learning resources.

Review #6

Good questions to ask:
  • Do you provide comprehensive print and online resources that cover the relevant curriculum and syllabus?
  • How do these resources support students’ independent study and revision outside of tutoring sessions?
  • Can students access the online resources anytime and from any device?
  • How do these resources complement and enhance the one-on-one tutoring experience?

Factor #7: Student Progress Reporting

Ultimately, as a parent, you want to know how lessons are going, and whether or not progress is being made.

Importantly, it’s key to know what homework or activities are being assigned for consolidation each week if it’s being completed and the student’s engagement in learning.

This way, as a parent, you can then support your child and where appropriate keep them accountable to ensure that the maximum progress is being achieved.

Art of Smart EducationOther Tutoring Organisations
Parents can access weekly lesson reports via our Online Portal that provide updates on homework completion, quality of homework completion, student engagement in lessons, key outcomes achieved in lessons, and new homework assigned.

Additionally, these are automatically emailed to parents every 2-3 weeks as a report. 
Most 1 on 1 tutoring organisations don’t provide lesson reports - they simply match a student and tutor, and then step back leaving a tutor to their own devices.

A few tutoring organisations provide some basic lesson reporting, although it doesn’t include important details around homework assigned, homework completion, and student learning engagement.

Review #7

Good questions to ask:
  • What lesson and student progress reporting do you provide?
  • How do I access it? How often can I see it?
  • Does it include information on homework assigned, homework completion, and homework quality?
  • Do you provide student learning engagement in your student reports?

Factor #8: Holistic Study, Exam and Wellbeing Support

Students only spend 1-2 hours per week in tutoring – but that’s only a small part of what it takes to really improve a student’s results. If a student isn’t motivated, doesn’t have a good study routine, is stressed and is burning out, little progress will happen between sessions, and a student won’t reach their potential.

That’s why the holistic support is SO important to really help a student excel at school. The content which tutoring focuses on is WHAT you need to know, but it doesn’t focus on the HOW – how to study, how to manage your time, how to prepare for exams.

That’s why you want to make sure you’re working with an organisation than can support your child with this as well!

Art of Smart EducationOther Tutoring Organisations
At Art of Smart we’ve conducted 10 years of research with Australia’s top-performing students (Top 2% scoring 98+ ATAR). This research is the feature of a book and has been used to identify the key ways in which high performing students successfully get motivated, manage their time, stay focused, write study notes, study smart, prepare for exams, manage stress & maintain wellbeing. 

This research underpins the tutoring support we provide.

Our tutors are trained specifically to mentor students within tutoring sessions and to actively support students develop these key skills to start smart, from goal setting to creating study plans, to preparing for exams.

Additionally, we provide exclusive workshops throughout the year for Art of Smart customers that provide additional support for students.
No other tutoring organisation across Australia has conducted as extensive research with students to identify the best strategies to study smart and maintain wellbeing so students can achieve their best.

While a couple of tutoring organisations claim to support students with study skills in sessions, only 2 other tutoring organisations has integrated any of this into their training for tutors, or their learning programs.

None run additional workshops and support throughout the year for students to develop these skills. 

Review #8

Good questions to ask:
  • What holistic support do you provide to students to help them with their study skills, exam skills, and wellbeing?
  • Are your tutors trained on how to do this? How so? 
  • What resources do you provide for students to help with this?
  • Do you provide any workshops, events or support for students to help them build their study skills, exam skills and wellbeing?

Factor #9: Customer Support Team and Feedback Process

At some point in your tutoring journey, you, or your tutor’s schedule and availability may change, or you may need additional subject support, requiring a change in tutors.

Additionally, sessions may change in quality with your tutor, or you have some feedback to help improve sessions.

Art of Smart EducationOther Tutoring Organisations
We have a dedicated Australian customer support team available Monday - Friday 9 am to 5 pm via phone or email.

They proactively get in touch with all of our customers throughout the year to check in on lesson progress, get and share feedback and support you to ensure tutoring is a success. 

If there are ever any challenges or issues, our support team are available to work with you and your tutor, or even look at pairing you with a different tutor.
Most tutoring organisations match you with a tutor and then leave you and the tutor on your own.

If they do have a support team, often it has been outsourced or is only available over email.

Review #9

Good questions to ask:
  • What happens if my tutor or our schedule changes, and we need a new tutor?
  • Do you have a dedicated customer support team? What days/times are you contactable? How are you contactable? 
  • Do you contact us at all throughout the year to check in on lessons and get feedback? How often does this occur?

Factor #10: Proven Track Record Supporting Students

Ultimately, you’re getting tutoring because you’d like to see results – whether that is improved confidence, a love of learning, or academic marks improving.

Each year a lot of new tutoring organisations pop up, only to disappear in a year or two. As a result, you want to make sure you’re working with an organisation that has a proven track record over the long term in supporting and partnering with families.

Art of Smart EducationOther Tutoring Organisations
We’ve been in business for over a decade and have a proven track record in supporting students.

1️⃣ On average our Year 12 students improve their results by over 20%

2️⃣ 93% of our students experience improved confidence

3️⃣ 9 in 10 students gain increased motivation and reduced procrastination

4️⃣ 80% of students experience reduced stress and anxiety around exams

5️⃣ 97% believe our tutors have built fantastic rapport in tutoring sessions
A lot of tutoring organisations come and go each year and as a result, don’t have a long term track record in supporting students.

If they have been around for a period of time, often they haven’t identified clearly with data the results they are achieving with students which then makes it difficult to evaluate their impact.

Review #10

Good questions to ask:
  • How long have you been in operation?
  • How many students have you supported?
  • What results have you helped those students achieve? Academically? Confidence? Motivation? Dealing with stress and anxiety? 

Wondering which schools in Brisbane are best based on ATAR results? Check out The Ultimate Brisbane ATAR School Ranking List!

About Art of Smart Education

At Art of Smart Education, we’re an award-winning provider of holistic tutoring and mentoring for students in years K-12. Our mission is to help students answer the difficult question, “What am I going to do with my life when I finish school, and how do I get there?” 

Looking for an expert QCE tutor in Brisbane? Choose Art of Smart for our exclusive resources and high-achieving students and mentors!

We understand that true success involves mastering study, career and leadership skills while maintaining your wellbeing, not just excelling in academics and as a result, over the last decade, we’ve supported over 10,000 students to achieve their best and maximise their options for life after school.

Each year over one million young Australians, parents, and teachers access our guides, videos and resources to navigate the journey through high school.

45,861 students have a head start...

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