Does your child actually need tuition?

When tuition genuinely helps

A specific, identified gap: a topic missed through illness, a subject where the school teaching has failed, a change of board or medium of instruction, or a diagnosed learning difficulty needing targeted support.

A board exam year, where structured revision and past-paper practice add real value.

A subject where the school teacher is genuinely not teaching — which in some Indian schools is the plain truth, and tuition is filling a hole rather than adding a layer.

In each of those cases the tuition has a defined target and an end point. That is the test.

When it does not

Because everyone in the class goes. This is the commonest reason in India and the worst one — it adds hours, removes rest, and teaches a child that school alone is not enough.

To raise a mark from 85 to 92 in a child who is already tired. The gain is small, and the cost is sleep and play, both of which affect performance more.

When the actual problem is elsewhere: sleep deprivation, undiagnosed vision or hearing problems, anaemia, anxiety, bullying, or a learning difficulty. Tuition on top of any of those makes things worse rather than better, and it delays the real diagnosis by months or years.

In primary school, generally. A six-year-old with an hour of tuition after a full school day is being over-scheduled, and the evidence does not support it.

What to try first

Talk to the class teacher and ask exactly where the difficulty is. 'Weak in maths' is not a diagnosis; 'has not understood place value' is, and it can be fixed in a fortnight at home.

Fix the physical: sleep hours, breakfast, a haemoglobin check, and vision and hearing tests. These explain a large share of school difficulty in Indian children and cost very little to rule out.

Fix the study conditions: a fixed time and place, screens off in the room, and short focused blocks with breaks. Many children labelled as needing tuition simply have nowhere quiet to work.

Teach study skills — self-testing, spacing practice, past papers — which are what actually raise marks and which almost nobody teaches.

Then, if the gap remains, get tuition for that specific gap with a defined end point.

Frequently asked questions

Q: The whole class goes. Are we handicapping our child? — Judge by whether your child has a specific need, not by attendance. Rest, play and sleep are competitive advantages that nobody counts.

Q: How many hours of tuition is too much? — If a child has no unstructured time on a weekday, or is sleeping less than the hours for their age, it is too much regardless of the subject.

Q: Should tuition start in Class 1? — Almost never. A young child struggling needs assessment, not a second school day.

Q: My child's marks improved with tuition, so it works. — Sometimes. Also check whether the tutor is doing the homework, teaching to the test, or whether marks rose because a specific gap was closed — the last is the only version worth continuing.