This is the final post in our five-part series on Nursery and Reception (the Early Years Foundation Stage). You can read the rest of the posts here. Better Tuition’s team of qualified teachers is expert in education from Early Years right up to GCSE and beyond, but when parents ask us to tutor their pre-school child to help them get ready for school, we always say no and explain why our Urmston tuition centre does not offer tuition for children under the age of five.

Tuition’s not for everyone!

We advocate taking a step back and allowing your child to be the leader in their own pre-school education. Children have a natural love of learning and love to explore the world and its many mysteries.

1. Tuition could make a pre-school child anxious

Parents want the best for their child. Most of us worry whether we are giving our child enough time and input to ensure they achieve their academic goals. If you engage a tutor to help your pre-school child ‘get ready for school’, however, you are sending them a signal that you want them to excel academically and demonstrating to them that extra help is needed to achieve this. Tuition for pre-school children may be counter-productive and cause your young child to become anxious. Teachers, academics, and educational psychologists agree that very young children should not be pressurised in this way and may feel anxious if told they have to get ready for school with a tutor.

2. The effects of tuition cannot be accurately measured in pre-school children

There is no research evidence to suggest that tuition is in any way beneficial to a pre-school child. There is no need to use a tutor to get ready for school.  Your child will be closely monitored by the professionals at nursery/ school and intervention is swift at this stage, if a learning difficulty is identified. That is why the teaching team at the Better Tuition Centre, Urmston will not accept children before they are five: in our professional judgement, tuition is superfluous before this age.  You do not need a tutor to help your pre-school child get ready for school.

3. Pre-school tuition can make parents anxious

Perhaps you feel anxious about your child’s educational future; everyone is keen to ensure their child performs to the very best of their ability.  You worry that you need to do something to help your pre-school child get ready for school. If you engage a tutor at a time when your child has not even begun their formal schooling and is not ready for it, you will only make yourself – and them – more anxious.  The advice of the expert team at the Better Tuition Centre, Urmston is to wait to let your child settle at school before engaging a tutor (and only ever do so if necessary).  Money spent on tuition to help your pre-school child get ready for school is money wasted.

So, having ruled out tuition, what can you do to help your child get ready for school?

You can help your child get ready for school with practical skills such as toilet training, putting on their coat and shoes and learning to grip a crayon or pencil. If appropriate, you can start to show them how to use scissors or recognise letters. Read our previous post on this here. You can find some pre-school/ Early Years literacy games here on our website. If you are concerned that your pre-school child may have learning difficulties, the proper person to speak to is their Health Visitor, who in most cases will be able to offer reassurance and in some cases intervention. If your child is over five and you feel they would benefit from some tuition, feel free to call Paul Syrett or Christine McLaughlin to book your free, no obligation assessment. Until then, remember that children are candles to be lit, not vessels to be filled, and that their own personal learning style cannot develop if their early learning is over-managed by unnecessary tuition.