The growing use of tutoring

For a decade, parents in Quebec have increasingly resorted to tutors to help their children at school. The pandemic has given a boost to the trend.

Mathieu Perreault
Press

Corinne d’Anjou, forensic odontologist from Candiac, contacted the organization School Success in March 2020 so that her three children, aged 9, 13 and 15, could have tutors. “My husband and I continued to work outside the home while the children did distance schooling. The children didn’t have any major difficulties, but we didn’t want to wait. Finally, we continued with the tutors after the return in person. ”

M^me Anjou had interrupted tutoring at the start of last September, but she resumed it in the fall for her two boys in high school, two and three times a week. “They have dyslexia and they ski and volleyball competitively, so there’s a bit of a shortage of time. It gives them stability. I find that the boys also need more support for the organization. They are even eager to learn French, which was not their favorite subject. ”

Félix Morin, who founded Academic Success in 2006, saw a 30% increase in its clientele during the pandemic, for 1,500 tutors and more than 5,000 students. “Since 2014, we have been doing virtual; before the pandemic it was 30%, now it’s 80% virtual. ”

Rates for tutors who have at least one year of college and two years of experience with children are $ 45 to $ 50 per hour.

At Alloprof, which provides chat tutoring on weeknights and Sundays, attendance and the number of students increased by 20% to 550,000 during the pandemic. “We are accessible free of charge through the government tutoring funding program during the pandemic,” explains Marc-Antoine Tanguay, Director of Strategy at Alloprof. Alloprof’s 200 tutors are all teachers and answer specific questions.

Alloprof is an NPO and participates in the government’s pandemic tutoring program. Academic Success is a private enterprise and does not participate in it.

The pandemic 48 million tutoring program is not to the taste of Josée Scalabrini, president of the Federation of Education Unions (FSE).

Should public support therefore be restricted to tutoring services which do not only employ teachers? “We understand the community organizations to need money, but if we adequately funded education, we would not have all these people who go to the community, they would become teachers,” says Mr.^me Scalabrini.

Social inequalities

With the cuts in education, teachers have less and less time for one-on-one follow-up, so parents are looking for help where they can, says M^me Scalabrini. “We were already denouncing the increasingly frequent use of guardians before the pandemic. It increases social inequalities because not everyone can afford a tutor. And the people who use the public program are often the best organized parents, we escape those who have difficulty helping their children for various reasons. ”

Christine Brabant, specialist in the issue at the Faculty of Education of the University of Montreal, confirms that the pandemic tutoring program can also accentuate social inequalities. “Ideally, tutoring needs would be determined by teachers,” says M^me Brabant. Moreover, we see teachers registering for the government’s pandemic tutoring platform to help their students. Unions don’t really like it. ”

Sylvie Lemieux, communications manager at the FSE, asserts that this union opposition does not come from the FSE. “Of course, we want reinforcement and not an addition to our task, but it was not meant that the members should not do it,” said Mr.^me The best. We know that many do. Rather, we pleaded for this to be correctly added to teachers’ contracts to supervise practice and avoid abuses. ”