Raedan Institute CoE

How to Choose a Tutor: What to Look For, What to Avoid and What to Ask

Half of UK secondary pupils now have a private tutor, but quality varies enormously. Here is the parent's guide to finding a tutor who will genuinely help your child, not just fill an hour and take your money...

https://conta.cc/3QdB9fm

Someone told that child they were the problem.

Maybe a teacher. Maybe a report. Maybe just the look on an adult's face every time the day went wrong.

Children believe what the room tells them.

And we built the room.

A child reads the conditions around them long before they can name what they're reading. The size of the group. The speed everything moves at. Whether the adult in front of them today is the same person they were yesterday.

They take all of it in. Then they decide who they are based on what they find.

When a child can't focus in a class of thirty, we say the child can't focus. When they shut down after being rushed through four transitions in an hour, we say they struggle with change. When they go quiet after being corrected in front of the whole room, we say they lack confidence.

None of that is the child.

The conditions, in plain terms:

→ Group size small enough that a child is actually seen
→ A pace that matches how learning genuinely happens, not how a timetable demands it
→ Emotional safety that doesn't vanish the second someone makes a mistake
→ Adults who show up the same way every day, so the child stops having to guess
→ A room where shame has been taken out of learning

Change the conditions and most of what we labelled a "problem child" quietly disappears.

Not because the child changed.

Because the room finally stopped telling them they were broken.

What did the room tell you when you were small? Comment if you remember the moment you believed it. 🤍

Mum apologized before her son said a word.

Pre-apologizing for him. Like she'd learned to do everywhere else. We hadn't even started yet.

"He can be a lot," she said, before he'd taken his coat off. Her hand was already on his shoulder. Half steering, half bracing.

He was eleven. Hood up. Eyes on the carpet.

I asked her to sit. Made her a cup of tea. Told her the assessment wasn't a test, and there were no wrong answers. Not for him. Not for her.

She kept talking anyway. Filling the silence with context, warnings, history... three schools, two exclusions, a folder of reports she'd brought without me asking.

I let her finish. Because she needed to.

Then I turned to him and asked what he liked doing when nobody was watching.

He looked up. Just for a second. Checking if it was a trick.

It wasn't.

We spent the next hour talking about Minecraft, a dog he used to have, and why maths makes his head hurt. No raised voice. No sighs. Nobody scribbling things down to use against him later.

About forty minutes in, he leaned back in the chair. Properly leaned back. Shoulders down for what looked like the first time in a long time.

That was the moment.

His mum saw it too. She didn't say anything, she just put her tea down and looked at the floor for a bit. I think she was trying not to cry in front of him.

That's what an assessment actually looks like here. Not a performance. Not a trap. A quiet conversation with two people who've been holding their breath for years.

If you've been pre-apologizing for your child in every room you walk into, I'd really like you to know you don't have to do that one here.

↳ If a conversation like this is something you've been needing, send me a message. No folder required.

Like and comment "seen" if you've ever apologized for your child before they've even spoken. You're not the only one who's been doing that. 💛

When Your Child Refuses to Go to School: A Parent's Practical Action Guide

School refusal is rising sharply across the UK. Here is the evidence-based parent's guide to understanding why it happens, what is actually going on, and how to help your child back to school effectively...

https://academicamentoring.com/school-refusal-parents-action-guide/

You were struggling. They said "be grateful."

And somehow you felt worse. Not because you're ungrateful. Because you just got told your pain doesn't count.

That's the part nobody names out loud.

Gratitude got hijacked. Somewhere between the journals and the morning routines and the Instagram quotes, it stopped being a feeling and became a weapon. A polite way to shut someone up.

You mention you're struggling. Someone replies, "but think about everything you have." And just like that, the conversation is over. You're now the problem for bringing it up.

The worst part? You start doing it to yourself.

You feel sad and immediately list the reasons you shouldn't. You feel exhausted and remind yourself other people have it harder. You feel lost and tell yourself you have no right to be, because your life looks fine on paper.

So the pain stays. Plus a new layer of guilt for feeling it.

Real gratitude doesn't work like that. Real gratitude can sit next to grief without trying to evict it. It doesn't need you to pretend. It doesn't ask you to perform wellness for people who can't handle your honesty.

You can have a good life and still be allowed to have a hard day.
You can love what you built and still feel like something's missing.
You can be thankful and still be tired.

Both things. At the same time. Without apology.

If someone tells you to "just be grateful" the next time you're hurting, hear what they're actually saying: I don't have the capacity to hold this with you. That's information about them. Not a verdict on you.

Like and comment "both" if you've ever been silenced by someone telling you to count your blessings. 🤍

Your child's report card has a design flaw.

Not your child. The card.

It measures a September baby and an August baby against the same standard, in the same class, in the same year. One of them is almost 12 months older. The report never mentions that.

Think about what 12 months means at age 7.

It's the difference between a child who can sit still for 40 minutes and a child whose brain hasn't built that wiring yet. The difference between reading fluency arriving in spring or arriving the following autumn. Both are normal. Both are healthy. One gets a tick. The other gets a label.

The report card calls this "below average."

What it's actually measuring is the calendar.

Schools sort kids by birth year, then grade them as if they were all standing on the same starting line. They aren't. A child born in late summer can be eleven months behind a classmate in brain development, motor skills, and emotional regulation. At age 7, that's roughly 13% of their entire life.

We'd never compare a 30 year old and a 31 year old and call one "underperforming." But we do it to children every single term.

And parents take that piece of paper home and believe it.

The grade your child brought home this year says far more about their birth month than about their mind.

Check the date on the birth certificate. Then check who they're being compared to.

Agree? Like and share if you think every parent deserves to know this before the next parent evening. 👇

That child is already trying their hardest.

You just can't see it.

The effort looks like stillness to you. It looks like staring out the window. It looks like the pencil hasn't moved in twelve minutes and the worksheet is still blank and you're starting to lose patience.

But something inside that kid is working harder than anything you've done all week.

They're trying to filter the buzzing light, the kid behind them tapping a foot, the sentence on the board that keeps rearranging itself, the voice in their head that already whispered "you're stupid" three times before lunch.

And then we lean down and say it. Gently, even.

"You just need to try harder."

Here's what we miss. A child doesn't hear that as a strategy. They hear it as a verdict. Because they already are trying. They've been trying since the bell rang. So if trying isn't working, the math in their head is simple and brutal:

→ I must be the problem.

That belief doesn't stay in the classroom. It follows them into their twenties, into job interviews, into relationships, into the quiet moments when they're deciding whether to ask for help or just disappear into themselves again.

"Try harder" sounds like encouragement. It lands like a diagnosis.

There's a better sentence. Takes about the same amount of breath.

"What's making this hard for you right now?"

That one question moves the child from suspect to partner. It tells them the difficulty is real. It tells them you believe them. It tells them you're on the same side of the problem instead of standing on the other side of it pointing fingers.

A lot of us were raised on "try harder." Some of us are still untangling what it taught us about ourselves.

If you were ever the kid staring at a blank page wishing your brain would just cooperate... you already know which sentence you needed to hear.

Like & comment "seen" if you want more adults to learn the difference. 💛

The Homework Debate: A Parent's Complete Guide to Getting the Balance Right

Too much homework harms wellbeing. Too little leaves children underprepared. Here is the evidence on what homework actually achieves, how much is enough, and how parents can support without taking over...

https://conta.cc/4oqkxO7

You did everything right. Your kid still struggles.

Every parent meeting. Every tutor session. Every book you bought hoping this one would finally click. You showed up more than most parents ever do.

And here you are. Watching your child fall further behind. Quietly wondering what you missed.

Probably nothing.

Something almost nobody names: a child can be surrounded by effort and still be in the wrong container. Age-based schooling groups kids by birthday. Not by where they actually are in reading, in math, in confidence, in readiness to sit still for forty minutes.

So a seven-year-old who needs six more months of foundation gets handed next term's material anyway. Because the calendar moved. Not because he did.

Then we ask why he's "behind."

He isn't.

He's sitting in a room built around an average child who doesn't actually exist.

The tutors helped. The meetings mattered. The books weren't wasted. Pouring water into a cracked cup doesn't mean you poured wrong. The cup was never going to hold it.

You're not the reason your child is struggling. You might be the first person in his life willing to ask whether the room he sits in every day was ever shaped to fit him.

If this lands somewhere honest, say so in the comments. Another parent needs to read it today and stop carrying something that was never theirs to carry. 🤍

Sunday dread is not about Monday.

It's about the gap between who you are on Sunday afternoon and who you have to become by Monday morning.

The bigger that gap, the heavier the Sunday.

Most people never measure it. They feel the weight and call themselves lazy, anxious, ungrateful. They scroll harder. Pour another glass. Try to outrun the feeling with a long walk or a good show.

But the feeling isn't a flaw.

It's a reading.

Your nervous system is doing math you haven't sat down to do. It's calculating how much of yourself you'll have to leave at the door tomorrow. The opinions you won't share. The pace that doesn't match yours. The version of you that performs well in that room but costs something to keep up.

A small gap feels like mild reluctance. A medium gap feels like Sunday evening sadness. A large gap feels like dread that starts climbing in by Saturday night.

Same nervous system. Different distance.

If Monday asked you to show up as yourself, the dread would shrink. Not vanish. Shrink.

→ So maybe the better question is what Sunday has been trying to tell you for a while now.

And whether you're ready to hear it before it gets louder.

When was the last Sunday that didn't feel heavy... and what was actually different about that week? Comment if you've carried this feeling for years and never had words for it.