The incontestable and considerable advantage of one-on-one tutoring

Numerous landmark experiments and meta-analysis of randomized studies conducted during the last few decades, all point to an important fact, illustrating the considerable advantages the one-on-one tutoring teaching method represents for the progress and performance of students. Available data shows that there are only a few interventions in education generating improved outcomes for students, and that among these, tutoring offered the best providable learning conditions.

 

In comparison of the effectiveness of one-on-one tutoring and conventional instructional methods, the observed difference is monumental, demonstrating that most students were capable of much greater learning than they typically achieved, and that the instruction they receive from a teacher in a large classroom can never match the personalized instruction provided by a tutor focused only on their individual needs and capabilities.

​

As a matter of fact, depending on the conditions and teaching methods and approaches, the studies found that tutoring had an extraordinary effect, with the average ranging from an impressive 0.37 standard deviations on a normal distribution curve, or 14 percentile points, equivalent to doubling or even tripling student’s annual gains in mathematics, to a monumental two standard deviations, or in statistical terminology two sigma, meaning that the average tutored student is performing better than 98% of his peers in a traditional classroom.

​

An interesting fact is that for centuries numerous great minds and prominent historical individuals including Alexander the Great tutored by Aristotle, Albert Einstein, Felix Mendelssohn, Agatha Christie, and practically every British monarch before Charles III, were educated partly or entirely by private tutors.