London Evening Standard
The $1000-an-hour Super Tutor Will Orr-Ewing 05 January 2012
In recent years, London's private tutors have been enjoying a turn in the spotlight. Articles describing tutoring's more glamorous features - from Gwyneth Paltrow's search for a "multilingual all-round genius" to Tatler magazine's showcasing of London's top "supertutors" - convey the impression of an exalted profession with high standards and rigorous codes of practice. The reality is quite the opposite. The London tutor is still characterised by his amateurism. Most tutors in London lack training, an established curriculum of methods and materials and a long-term commitment to the vocation. For many well-educated and ambitious practitioners, tutoring remains a part-time job, a stop-gap between university and more lucrative or prestigious occupations. In New York, tutoring is conceived of differently. To become a tutor is to choose a career, and it is a career choice as revered as other esteemed and competitive fields. Having been featured in the Tatler article myself and having already made important strides towards professionalising London's private tutoring industry, I went to New York to try to understand the key differences in our approaches. The first person I met was Arun Alagappan, who founded and oversees Advantage Testing, New York's most highly regarded tutoring group. Alagappan is passionate about tutoring's capacity to transform lives. Even his competitors are quick to admit that he was a pioneer in instituting the scrupulous standards that have elevated tutoring to the respected profession it has become in New York City. By insisting upon long-term, academically substantive preparation for any standardised entrance exam, Alagappan has helped New York's parents understand that tutoring provides far-reaching benefits and represents a worthwhile investment in their children's future. Of course, professional standards bring professional prices. New York's tutors charge eye-watering figures. Advantage Testing's 250 tutors charge between $250 and $950 an hour, and typically meet students for roughly 30 hours a week. "Our top tutors can earn as much as lawyers or medical doctors here," Alagappan says. He believes his tutors' fees are well justified by their academic qualifications, their earning potential were they to pursue other professions, their unique abilities to help students master difficult concepts and achieve concrete results, and their outstanding evaluations (all Advantage tutors are required to maintain an average score of above nine out of 10 on student questionnaires). Such figures are sure to astound London parents, who are accustomed to paying about £50 an hour for private tutors. However, the level of professionalism of New York's tutors is almost equally astounding. Advantage Testing may recruit as few as one or two tutors a year - out of more than 1,000 applicants. Once hired, tutors undergo a gruelling training programme of several months. As they progress, their billing rates are linked directly to their student evaluations and the students' increased performance on the exams for which they have prepared. Some agencies, such as The Ivy Consulting Group, told me that they were happy not to take on any new tutors in a new academic year. Once recruited, a tutor is typically put through an extensive training process and is often turned down even after its completion. Another New York tutoring company, Prestige Prep, will not let its tutors teach until
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