As a mother of three who also works part-time I don't always have enough time as I would like to do certain things. My children's education is extremely important to me and I always try my best to help them along with their homework; however I just haven't had time in the last year or so to help my daughter with the first year of her GCSE studies. She has especially been struggling with her maths and so I decided to get her some help. Following some advice by a friend who had done the same I decided to look for a university student to act as my daughter's GCSE Maths tutor. Detailed below are the pros and cons that I found from taking this route. Hopefully my article will help the rest of you decide which the best option for you is.

The upside

As I have said Maths tutor; my whole decision to employ a student as my daughter's GCSE Maths tutor was based on the recommendation of a close friend. She had done the same a few years ago with her son with excellent results. Her experience was that her son related well to someone who was only a few years older and that he was more responsive to his tutor than he might have been to someone who was more senior. Also hiring a student worked out quite a bit cheaper than the figures she was being quoted to employ a professional GCSE Maths tutor. So I went to the local university, which is only a few miles away, and posted a note on the message board. I was soon inundated with students interested in offering their services.

Making my choice

I decided to have an informal chat with the first five students that had contacted me to see which one I thought was best suited. However, I have to say that I was somewhat underwhelmed by the way that they came across during out chats. So I contacted the next three on my list and followed the same process. The second of the three that I interviewed was a young man in his 2nd year at university who was very impressive and so I decided to go with him.

The downside

Unfortunately my daughter also seemed to think that he was impressive and it was quite obvious that she had a bit of a crush on him. However, he always seemed to behave professionally when I was around and he certainly held my daughter's attention - so I left them to it. Initially he was very reliable and always turned up on time. Then after a few months he started phoning up with excuses about why he couldn't turn up - usually due to his workload. Sometimes he simply didn't turn up and never even called.

I was ready to get rid of him and look elsewhere for a GCSE Maths tutor, but my daughter said she didn't want me to and was really learning from him. I should have listened to my instincts! Towards the end of the school year it became obvious to me that less and less tutoring was going on during their sessions and on several occasions when unaware of my presence the student was clearly flirting with my daughter. Fortunately he didn't turn up to another arranged session and this gave me the perfect excuse to get rid of him. I then did my best to help my daughter for the remainder of the year.