When my son was entering kindergarten, and his playmates could not understand him, my spouse and I decided speech therapy was worth a try. The group our child joined included three other youngsters. Since he never missed a session, but made no progress after six weeks, I asked to sit in the class. What I saw during that hour was a dedicated teacher with four eager little upturned faces. And during those 60 minutes, my son received only 13-minutes of directed help. The next day we switched to a private speech therapist who gave him undivided attention plus tailored homework assignments perfect for his age (who wouldn’t want to drink thick milkshakes though a straw?!). During the next few weeks, we witnessed astonishing progress and, at the end of three months, our speech therapist had worked herself out of a job!

By now, you’ve probably figured out this illustration has something to do with the advantages of private, one-on-one tutoring. The bottom line is that, by its nature, group tutoring must operate in a less-productive, less-directed, and less-personalized fashion. Our article 20 Reasons to Choose an In-home Tutor includes a comparison chart that simply and factually lists the differences between these two vastly different approaches.

As the above analogy shows, students get the best results from one-on-one professional support. And, while each private session may cost more, families will spend less in total thanks to the faster progress over a short period of time.