Victorian school literacy leader Kylie Hoey says she’s been frustrated and angered by the seemingly ad-hoc and pricey tutoring scene, telling EducationHQ that children are being let down by often well-meaning, yet unqualified, people that are only doubling down on discredited instructional methods followed at some schools.
The lack of regulation and oversight given to the industry is astounding, she argues.
You only have to scour your local community Facebook page to realise anyone can be paid to tutor a child in reading, she suggests.
“We’ve got low reading rates around this area, and you get a lot of posts from parents saying, ‘my child needs help with reading. Does anyone know a tutor?’
”People will just pop up and post, ‘I’m available’.
“And you go on their profile, there’s nothing to say if they’re even a teacher. So, you literally can just say, ‘yep, I’m happy to do it. This is my rate. This is my address’.”
Even if the tutors do happen to be teachers, Hoey says, parents do not know the right questions to establish if they are trained in evidence-based practice or not. The science of reading may be well off their radar, she warns.
According to Mohan Dhall, CEO of the Australian Tutoring Association and an education lecturer at University of Technology Sydney, Hoey raises a legitimate concern.
“It is something we’ve heard and it is a concern we share,” he says.
“Evidence-based practice in all aspects of education are central to successful teaching. Now, [in the early literacy space] we found that when you get well-meaning but uneducated tutors trying to teach kids early reading (skills), they can create problems that are lifelong if they’re never corrected…”
Hoey has taken it upon herself to send literacy resources to some teachers who have quit the profession and are now working as casual reading tutors with large tutoring firms – well-intended people who she says are trying to navigate the job while lacking critical knowledge and skills.
“[I get] questions about spelling patterns and things like that, because [one tutor I know] gets no training there and they use a program that’s not actually evidence-based.”
“And it’s $1600 a term, so 10 sessions. That’s what it costs the parents.”
Keen to avoid more instructional casualties slipping though the system, Hoey says she feels compelled to pass on ‘all the information I can’ to her contact.
“And I mean, good on her, at least she tries to actually find out (how to teach reading in line with the evidence) instead of just fumbling through.”
Another problem, Hoey contends, is that some Victorian schools have not been following an approach grounded in the science of reading, leaving too many children struggling and too many parents desperate for extra support.
These flawed approaches are then applied in the tutoring space, essentially giving children another dose of the same failed intervention, she warns.
“When I asked [one parent] to ask about [her child’s tutor’s] assessments, what she’s doing, all that sort of thing, it was the same stuff that the school were doing that wasn’t teaching her child to read.
“So, I guess I’ve been annoyed about [the private tutoring situation] in lots of ways.
“I ended up just tutoring that child myself and screened her myself, just so I could tell her mum what she actually needed,” Hoey shares.
The educator says tutors ought to have a licence they’re required to show parents of struggling readers that demonstrates they have the required knowledge and skills to teach reading effectively.
“Because parents aren’t really armed with what to ask. They hear the word ‘tutor’ and they just think, ‘oh, I’m doing the right thing for my child’ and it maybe relieves them of the guilt they might feel for their child falling behind.”
Currently there are no real accountability measures for tutors, nor for the companies many work for, Hoey adds.
“And I think they’re actually making money from, a lot of the time, those kids who could have reading disabilities. That’s what you’re looking at, really vulnerable kids. And they’re making a lot of money.”
Dhall says part of the issue here is that tutoring is a service, and so under consumer law ‘it’s hard to say whether a service has been prescribed and therefore delivered’.
“So if it’s never prescribed, you’re in the realm of expectations. What do I think I’m getting? What am I actually getting? So it’s very, very hard for a parent to say, ‘well, I didn’t get what I paid for’.
Not outlining exactly what they will deliver serves tutors very well, Dhall adds.
“So they won’t say things like, ‘if your child can’t write a structured piece of writing in two months, you get your money back’ – that would be an example of accountability or a guarantee.
“Well, in this industry, most tutors steadfastly avoid any guarantees.
“And then that’s open to blame the kid and say, ‘look, the kid was lazy. They didn’t do what we said they should do. They didn’t listen’.
“So yes, there are extremely low levels of accountability. If there are at all, they tend to be commercial. And even those commercial accountabilities are hard to quantify.”
Dhall says it’s time the Government started to ‘meaningfully engage’ with tackling these core issues within the tutoring industry.
“You can easily address it. You’ve got a peak body here interested in best practice standards,” he says.
“We’re interested in licensing tutors and having a regime. Well, the industry wants to do this, at least the responsible part of the industry,but government doesn’t want to.
“So, I think there’s a pretty big problem just there.”
Hoey is calling for sweeping change and greater scrutiny over the private tutoring sector, and especially in early literacy.
“They don’t have to teach them to read at the end of the day. They’re not in the system that they have any responsibility to answer for. They could sit and not do anything with this child and accept money.
“There’s nowhere really to go, and regardless, by that time it’s too late for kids.”
