What to Look for in a Tutor (Beyond Subject Knowledge)

Subject knowledge is the baseline — of course your child's tutor needs to know their material. But the tutors who make the biggest difference share something else: the ability to build genuine rapport, understand how individual students learn and make the subject feel achievable. Here's what to look for.

Feedback quality matters most

A 2020 meta-analysis by Wisniewski, Zierer and Hattie — covering 435 studies and more than 61,000 participants — found feedback has a medium effect size (d = 0.48) on student learning. Critically, the type of feedback matters enormously: specific, actionable feedback that tells the student what to do next significantly outperforms general commentary. When observing a trial session, ask: does the tutor explain what went wrong, why it went wrong, and what to do differently next time?

Genuine encouragement vs hollow praise

Dweck's research on praise and mindset shows that specific, process-focused encouragement — 'I can see you understood the connection between those two ideas, that's the key insight' — builds genuine confidence, whereas generic praise ('great job!') can actually reinforce a fixed mindset. Look for a tutor who notices specific things your child does well and names them precisely. This kind of feedback builds real academic resilience.

Clear session structure

The best tutoring sessions have a clear beginning (reviewing last session), middle (new learning or practice) and end (summarising what was covered and setting next steps). The EEF's evidence on effective tutoring (2022) identifies structure and curriculum alignment as key factors in whether tutoring translates into measurable academic progress. A tutor who starts and ends sessions without structure is unlikely to be optimising your child's time.