Before the review I was sceptical that maths tuition would offer my son very much, but I've completely changed my opinion. He really, really enjoyed his time with the tutor, he's so much more confident in what he is currently working on in school and he learnt so much more on top of that. He's had a massive boost and we only did two sessions!
I've a review video below and the last 2 minutes are entirely my son's opinion on his sessions, so skip ahead if you just want to hear directly from him.
In 25 years with 7 children we've only ever paid for music tuition. Our children fortunately haven't had to take any school entrance exams or fallen behind their peers and we haven't ever felt a need to consider home tuition to support their learning in school. I can now totally see the benefits that I didn't before.
I have heard horror stories of home tuition costing a fortune, so before we even signed up I was impressed with the prices. Matr starts at only £9.25 per week for 25 minutes online one-to-one tuition. Their best value package is £74.99 a calendar month for 50 minutes tuition per week. Customers can even pay weekly. Your child will have the same tutor every week.
The way Matr home maths tuition works is really slick and effective. Communication is via audio, so your child doesn't ever see their tutor and vice versa, but they still build up a great rapport. The tutor controls what slide your child sees on screen, and both the tutor and the student can use the screen as a whiteboard to write, draw and type anywhere on it. The tutor also has a visible pointer tool and there is space for notes. The on-screen controls are really good.
Matr's one-to-one tuition is tailored precisely to your child and follows the National Curriculum. The tutors are all maths experts, every session is analysed and specialist teams oversee curriculum design. Tutors are also background checked and complete safeguarding training. They are first-rate teachers who have already delivered over half a million hours of online tuition between them.
Before your first session you can opt to select an ability level or your child can do a short multiple choice maths test so that their individual learning needs can be assessed. Some questions were very easy and others very difficult, but there were only around 10 and it took my 10 year old son under 10 minutes. He made some daft errors and his first session was slightly easy for him, so I'd say this works really well as a measure for the tutor.
Throughout tuition, each lesson, topic and question is carefully selected to support any gaps in knowledge or understanding, and encourage development of current maths skills.
Signing up was incredibly easy. You complete your child's learning profile, which takes around 3 minutes, decide what length of lessons you'd like and enter payment details. Then you book your preferred day of the week and time slot - you can cancel any time. Matr match your child with a suitable tutor and then it's over to your child for the next bit...
The on-screen countdown is a brilliant touch. By logging on my son knew exactly how long he had before he started and didn't need to panic that he was late. Each session includes a 10 minute warm-up activity and a 5 minute cooldown at the end. It's an excellent idea and works really well to get your child into the correct frame of mind to really take the session in, and to relax afterwards. It's also a guide to how well they understood what they have just learnt.
I think it's obvious that we are really impressed with Matr. My son absolutely loved it and sitting nearby listening I couldn't believe just how much he learnt. To know he's already applied that learning in class is fantastic.
The tutor never stopped throughout and my son was her focus the whole time. She was very skilled and assessed what he knew really quickly, whilst building a really good rapport with my son. Hopefully he won't mind me saying that when he watched the video and realised he'd not said 'goodbye' properly, he shed a tear.
You can find out all that you need to know and book on the Matr.org online one-to-one maths tuition website.
As previously stated we were reimbursed for some of the time the review and video have taken, as this post alone has taken around 10 hours of work to put together, but my reviews always give my own genuine opinion.
This seems like such an easy service to use and great value compared to face to face tutoring I’ve looked at previously. I’m definitely going to consider it further!
ReplyDeleteIt's honestly completely different to what I'd expected. Way easier, far more fun and it was barely even intrusive because my son could just sit and do it by himself without affecting any of the rest of the household. We chose to have lessons from 4-5pm and I just carried on as normal and made the tea :D
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