When 2026 NAPLAN results were announced, the federal Education Minister praised schools that use explicit teaching and small group tutoring for improved performance. That is a significant endorsement, though it refers to tutoring which occurs in schools and is monitored by teachers. However, the majority of parents looking for tutoring services for high school students in Melbourne look for something else: individual tutoring after school hours. Is the same evidence applicable to such a situation? Yes, to a certain extent, and it impacts any rational decision a parent makes.
A Big Market With Minimum Regulation
Private tutoring for high school students in Melbourne has grown into a significant market in Australia, with researchers calling it a “shadow education system”. Unlike schools, tutoring organisations are not regulated by any licensing scheme on the national level. Tutoring does not require a teaching qualification, and nobody ensures whether the tutor teaches according to the Victorian curriculum. The figures provided by university researchers about the number of tutors in Australia are quite contradictory, which demonstrates a lack of reliable data.
However, there is one rule that applies strictly in Victoria. Private tutoring of children is considered a child-related activity by the state government, and a Working With Children Check is usually required. Parents may request to see the document before the first lesson.
Evidence-Based Advice
Research on small group tutoring conducted in Australia provides several rules of thumb that parents may find helpful. First, smaller groups produce better results; second, efficiency decreases as groups get bigger. More frequently held, shorter sessions have more evidentiary support than a once-a-week session. Additionally, trained tutors tend to be more efficient than enthusiastic untrained helpers.
However, researchers emphasise that tutoring must complement, rather than substitute good classroom teaching. Moreover, most of the strong studies are related to school-day programs which involve teachers. While it is impossible to replicate that model completely, parents may insist on a certain level of organisation of the tutoring process: starting assessment, clearly defined goals, and progress monitoring.
In Person, Online or Both?
The format of lessons is more important for a teenager’s experience than most parents would ever think. In-person sessions are a better fit for students who can’t focus when they’ve got a million other tabs open on their screen, whereas online sessions are ideal for kids who live in a large city and the thought of spending an hour commuting to and from a lesson is just too much. And then there are recorded lessons which can be super helpful for revision or catching up after being out sick, but only if the kid actually watches them, of course.
Figuring out which format suits which temperament is a pretty logical starting point:
- For a shy kid, being in a small online group with classmates can be a real confidence booster.
- For a busy kid, having the option to do lessons at times that work for them and being able to access recordings is a godsend.
- For a perfectionist, it’s about finding a tutor who’s more interested in clear, logical methodology than in neat final answers.
These are just practical considerations, not some hard and fast rules. A short trial of each format is probably going to settle the question way faster than any article or advice can.
Checking Out the Adult On The Other End Of The Lesson
While there is a legal check that needs to be done, the majority of the vetting work falls to the parents. Obviously you want to know if the tutor knows their stuff, but beyond that, you want to make sure they know what’s being taught in Victorian schools at each year level. Asking them some direct questions can give you a lot of insight:
- What sort of group sizes do they work with? How do they decide who sits with who?
- How do they measure progress, and how often do they keep you in the loop with how your kid is going?
- What happens if your kid gets stuck, upset or is falling behind?
A trial session is going to tell you far more about the tutor than any website ever could. Watch how they react when a kid gives a wrong answer, because whether they can handle that sort of thing is going to predict how the term as a whole is going to feel.
Tutoring And Support: Not A Replacement For School
Success is all about understanding and confidence first and foremost, with better marks coming later. If a kid is relying too heavily on a tutor for every homework question, they’re probably just building dependence, rather than actually getting better. There’s also a risk of a kid who stops paying attention in class, thinking that they can just get the same lesson emailed to them later on.
A few focused hours a week and some decent downtime usually works out better than trying to cram a whole schedule into a week. At the end of each term, ask yourself two pretty simple questions. Is the kid asking better questions than they used to? Are they attempting harder stuff on their own? If the answer to both is yes, then you know that the tutoring is actually doing its job. Which is making itself less and less necessary every term.
