they have done 12 months of training. In one module of many, their director, Phil Cohen, hires young actors to imitate behaviour seen in the most unco-operative students - and coaches his tutors on how to help these students achieve academic success. Tutoring is truly a profession in New York, and many of the tutors I met there drew analogies with the legal world. The Ivy Consulting Group, for instance, has modelled its corporate structure on that of a law firm so that consistently good tutors can "make partner" and share in the equity. Alagappan says that he borrowed more than 30 standard procedures from the Wall Street law firm for which he used to work after graduating from Harvard Law School. And like law firms that conduct pro bono work, the tutoring profession appears similarly committed to public service, recognising education as a principal means to opportunity. More than 25 per cent of Advantage Testing's work is carried out on a pro bono basis, and it has formed the Advantage Testing Foundation to help talented students of modest means achieve their academic and professional goals. Other groups I spoke to also maintain a commitment to tutoring students who cannot afford to pay full price for their services. When approaching how to teach the United States' most prolific college entrance exam, the SAT, Alagappan spent two years breaking down the test to develop a rigorous content-based method for every type of question students might encounter. "Part of the reason everybody assumed you couldn't prep for the test," he says, "is that no one had bothered to analyse each question. On the highest-stakes test of these kids' lives!" The company now spends millions of dollars each year refining its curriculum and creating teaching materials for its tutors. Alagappan has made such a success of running the organisation over the past 25 years that he spends the majority of his working hours doing what he loves the most: tutoring. This enterprise to professionalise what was (as it is now in London) a highly variable industry has brought profits but, more importantly, it has attracted talent into the teaching industry. Now that top tutors can earn as much as their Ivy League counterparts in law, medicine, finance and consulting, it seems indisputable that the field of education has been enriched. Are London's parents ready to pay such astronomical fees for outstanding educational services? Perhaps not, but Alagappan says the many UK students and families his group has serviced through trans-Atlantic visits and online tutoring have embraced his academically rigorous, long-term approach to tutoring. What seems beyond dispute is that London students of all backgrounds deserve a more professionalised body of tutors, one that upholds tutoring as a lifetime calling.
Will Orr-Ewing is the Founder of Keystone Tutors and Chalkboard Learning
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