Agencies Working Together

Agencies Working Together

Private tuition is a huge industry and one that is rapidly growing as parents seek to provide additional support to their children through private tutors. In research conducted by EdPlace, it was found that UK parents spend £6 billion every year on private tuition. In addition, with advances in technology, many tuition agencies are seeing growing demand from parents outside the UK for private tuition through an online learning platform.

Whether it’s out-of-town tuition centres or a tuition agency, there is no doubt that the number of providers of tuition has increased substantially over the past few years. With a fragmented market and new agencies popping up every day, it makes business sense for agencies to work together and collaborate.

The Law Tutors and Athena Tuition have been working together for a nearly a year and both agencies now have a strong working relationship based on trust and mutual respect.

With The Law Tutors being a completely specialised agency with a focus solely on law, there is often the need to refer work to another agency. Shiv Raja, Director of The Law Tutors, says:

“We are often asked by parents of a client we are tutoring about whether we can recommend tutors for non-law subjects. As our agency is completely specialised and focused solely on law, it means that we go out to our partners. We often refer work to Athena Tuition and parents have told me that they have been impressed by how quickly the team at Athena responds to requests.”

One of the biggest challenges that any agency can have has is finding reliable tutors in a broad range of different subjects so working together with other agencies is not only a great way to utilise a wider tutor pool but it also provides an excellent support structure so that agencies can discuss and debate ideas with each other so that both agencies can benefit.

A recent example of where Athena Tuition and The Law Tutors worked together is in relation to sourcing a law tutor for intellectual property law. The Law Tutors had a number of different intellectual property law tutors so worked with Athena Tuition to provide their client with a tutor.

Wesley Sanders, Education and Marketing Director at Athena Tuition, is a strong believer in working together:

“We’ve worked with The Law Tutors for a number of months now and we share the same ideas in a lot of different areas. We’ve referred work to each other’s agencies and this has meant a seamless and faster service for our respective clients. What matters to a parent or student is getting the right tutor at the right time, but for Athena and The Law Tutors there’s an opportunity to benefit from each others specialism to save time, and ultimately provide a better end service to our clients.”

Sharing ideas can be mutually beneficial and if one agency has experienced something, it is likely that other agencies have been through something similar. Whether it’s discussing best practice for recruitment or coming up with an innovative way to improve the delivery of lessons, it’s always good to talk!

Athena Tuition and Audiopi : Free Podcasts!

Athena Tuition and Audiopi
Our collaboration with Audiopi!

Here at Athena we’re proud to announce that we’ve begun working with Audiopi– an exciting new provider of learning podcasts- to provide their service to our tutors and students completely free!

Please email wesley@athenatuition.co.uk to get started using these podcasts for yourself or your students completely free!

Over to Audio Pi themselves to explain more about what they do:

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Audiopi

So what is Audiopi? In a nutshell, we create high quality educational podcasts for GCSE and A-level students. All our material is written by top teachers, leading academics and chief examiners and are tailored to specific exam boards so students know they are listening to exactly what they need for their exams. Our mission is to inform, stimulate and inspire students and of course, boost their exam performance.

The Power of Audio: Supporting Students

Audio is a vital part of how we absorb and process information. Widespread research has shown that listening is a particularly crucial part of learning, and an effective means of improving knowledge retention*. This is because when you listen to something, rather than read or watch it, your brain has to work harder and invokes a more complex process mechanism: it has to digest the information and create it’s own images. As a result, the information is stored more deeply. Cool, huh?

To enforce this idea, each of our tutorials is packed with music, sound effects and original recordings to help reinforce the learning and engage students. They are delivered in easily digestible 10 minute lessons and this is all available on your smartphone, tablet or computer so students can listen whenever, wherever they choose.

Our podcasts are written by teachers, academics and examiners across a myriad of leading institutions.

* “Delivery of verbal (audio) information improves learning capacity.” (Mayer and Moreno 2003)

Supporting tutors

With one of our team coming from a tutoring background, we appreciate that tutors are extremely busy and so we want to help you with the load. Not only can our pods provide quick refreshers of the course content for tutors, but we’ve found that they act as a great support to the lessons and teaching already given by tutors:

  • Lesson preparation – Our podcasts are a quick and easy way for students to get up to speed with the course content. Giving them a pod before a lesson frees up more time for tutors to focus on essay technique and exam preparation.
  • Homework – We are a natural for setting homework. After a lesson students can listen to a pod and embed the knowledge they’ve just learned.
  • Revision – The breakdown of the content, set out in detail on the Audiopi platform, means students can quickly pin point what they need to refresh their memory. And all our modules offer exam guidance.

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Working with Athena: Free Access to our Resources!

We’ve teamed up with Athena Tuition to offer our wealth of resources to you and your students completely free! We want to make a difference to the education process and help students achieve even more in their exams.

https://www.audiopi.co.uk/subjects/history/a-level/ocr/french-revolution-and-rule-of-napoleon-1774-1815

https://www.audiopi.co.uk/subjects/english-literature/gcse/ocr/dna-dennis-kelly
Have a listen to some of our taster resources using the links above. We welcome feedback and questions, so don’t hesitate to get in touch! Email alex@audiopi.co.uk for any queries or comments.

‘Teaching Outside the Classroom’: Reflecting On Our First Conference in Edinburgh

As many of you will already know, Athena Edinburgh ran a conference on Saturday 4th June titled ‘Teaching Outside the Classroom’, which was held in the beautiful Surgeons’ Hall on Nicolson Street. First and foremost, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our speakers and our fantastic attendees. It was a real honour for us, as a company and as individuals, to be able to put this day together and to spend some time with other like-minded individuals and to expand our understanding of what the future of tuition looks like.

Upcoming Edinburgh Conference

On Saturday 4th June, Athena Tuition is excited to be hosting a conference in Edinburgh called Teaching Outside the Classroom.

Held in the Surgeons’ Hall, in the centre of Edinburgh, on Saturday 4th June, from 1pm to 5pm, Tickets cost £7. Tickets may be booked here.

This event is for all those interested in tutoring and teaching- not just our own tutors, but those working for other companies, and even those who have no experience at all and are looking to get into the field. Given the speed with which the private tuition market is growing, it is vital that tutors in Edinburgh get the best possible preparation, and be kept abreast of the latest innovations in the field.

A TutorMapper Guest Blog: Athena Tuition, Where Quality And Reputation Are Guaranteed

When TutorMapper first opened for business as a convenient way for families in London to find private tutors, there was one aspect of our mission statement that was non-negotiable – quality. What makes TutorMapper unique within the tutoring arena is that we work with only the finest and most reputable tutoring agencies in the capital, where every tutor has been subject to the most rigorous of selection processes and safety checks. Meeting our very high standards perfectly is Athena Tuition, one of the first agencies to join our platform.

The world is your classroom: London Tutors teach outdoors!

Outdoor learning is a great way to enjoy studying for GCSE’s, A levels, and Oxbridge entrance exams– and to make sure your student’s brains are ready for the new school year.

Studying through summer can be a motivational challenge, so is the answer just to hire private tuition and sit little Jimmy in the London living room and keep it all ticking over?

Outdoor learning is a great alternative way to engage students but it requires forethought and originality from a teacher, parent or private Maths or English tutor. Here are a few ideas get you started in the remaining couple of weeks of the summer break.

SEPTEMBER 2015 Exam resits, its not all doom and gloom!

Exam resits, it’s not all doom and gloom! – By the education team at Athena Tuition

So you might be reading this and maybe your A Level results didn’t quite match your ideal university’s requirements. Stay calm, this isn’t the end of the world, and there’s always something you can do. Taking resits, whether at the AS, A2 or IB level can help you reapply to university, or convince your teachers that you ought to have a better predicted grade.