At the end of the day, finding the right tutor is like finding the right employee.

Yes, there is a set of criteria that you look out for. Afterwhich, it is mostly luck, trial and error.

Even from an educational centre’s point of view, our criteria are more defined than the typical parent but the ratios are as follow:

Out of 10 applicants, we will have 1 applicant we want to interview. If we are lucky we will have 2.

Out of 3 applicants whom we interview, we are lucky if we get 1 that we want to put on probation.

1 out of 3 applicants we put on probation will be hired.

Although our criteria are slightly stricter, i would assume a parent will need to look at at least 30 possible tutors before settling on 1 good tutor.

An orange that is not on a tree is not a living thing because it does not fulfill the criteria of living things as stated in the MOE syllabus although the criteria are not as strict as we move up to secondary or tertiary level.


An orange on a tree is a living thing as it fulfills ALL the criteria of a living thing, again, as stated in the MOE syllabus.

Most of us know that completing School homework is never enough to help a student excel in an exam. Of course, there are some students who can score well without any non-school work. But they are the exceptions.


To understand why schoolwork is insufficient, it is good to look at why would a student get an exam question wrong.

There are 2 questions that you can ask:
1. How difficult is this question?
2. How familiar is this question?

For question 1, it is basically asking how many concepts and/or cognitive skills are required to solve an exam question. The more concepts or skills needed, the less likely a student will get it correct.

Question 2 is asking how many times has the student been exposed to this question before? The more times, the higher chance to get it correct.

Most teachers will not set an exam paper which everyone can get high marks for. They will set some difficult questions and some unfamiliar questions. And unfamiliar questions will not come from worksheets the teacher or the school has given out.

That’s why school homework is never enough and what this means to parents/tutors/students is that at least SOME practice of questions from non-school sources are needed.

Learning style is important but depending on the context, there are a few more important areas to take care of before spending time and resources on it.


If the context is improvement in exams (I assumed that that's the prime concern of parents who view this thread), i wouldn't worry about learning style for my child if I have not deal with these areas that I found are more important in improving a student's exam score:

CONSISTENCY in homework completion
I would rather my student spend 10 minutes a day for 5 days than to spend 50 minutes a day to complete a particular assignment.

Careful Selection of Practice Questions
Most important factor we found that help students improve in the shortest time possible. The key is to understand the scope of the school's assignments and find relevant questions within the scope. Most tutors and/or parents neglect this portion.

Efficient Feedback/Correction system
A student will need an efficient feedback system to tell him/her why he/she got a question wrong. It can be a tutor, parent or simply the answers at the back of an assessment book.