A young Sheffield man has built a thriving business which is changing the face of UK tutoring.
Robin Gibbons, aged 20, set up his online GCSE and A-Level tutoring business which promotes learning on a one-to-one basis during lockdown. Within months the popularity of his teaching methods grew and he found himself hiring more tutors to cope with increasing demand. Less than two years on he runs a business with nearly 50 tutors throughout the UK and overseas.
He said: “I realised pretty early on that online lessons to a class of 50 plus pupils just wasn’t engaging enough and many pupils didn’t even have cameras so couldn’t respond to the teachers.
“I decided to start providing one-to-one online learning myself. I’d had experience of tutoring friends and younger students in my spare time and felt confident I could offer it on a wider scale.”
Robin, who specialises in Maths, Science and ICT tuition, believes that in order to grab a pupil’s attention teaching has to be on a far smaller basis and preferably one-to-one. Tutors should themselves be interested in the subject at hand and keen to offer personalised support.
Robin acknowledges that COVID and constant lockdowns worked in his company’s favour in the sense that thousands of students in the UK have fallen behind in lessons. Other pupils have managed to keep up but the need to bring those left behind up to speed means top pupils are becoming bored and distracted with lessons. As a result, his company Latimer Tuition has been bombarded with worried parents booking in learning time for their children.
He said: “I’d no idea the business was going to get so busy so soon. I started it because I was worried about what I was going to do after leaving school with just predicted grades. I realised early on in lockdown what a disaster online education was becoming and knew I could add much more vibrancy to lessons.”
