Tutoring for Everyone: From Aristocratic Privilege to Community-Powered Learning

For most of history, tutoring was a privilege of the aristocracy. If you were rich, you hired the best tutors money could buy. If you weren’t, you sat in crowded classrooms (if you were lucky), worked it out alone, or stayed ungleefully ignorant with your ten siblings, hoping one would make it past the age of six.

The aristocrats knew something simple: one-on-one education works. That hasn’t changed. The best tutors are still mostly reserved for the wealthy. Even if you get into the best university in the world, nothing compares to the attention, rhythm, and accountability of a tutor who knows you, adapts to you, and challenges you. That's what I do.

Nowadays, an LLM like ChatGPT can teach you grammar rules faster than I can. It can even give you personalized drills. But what it can’t replicate is the human connection. My job as a tutor isn’t just to teach you where to put a semicolon; it’s to connect with you, to build trust, to give you the courage to try, fail, and risk embarrassment, which, by the way, is one of the best ways to remember something.

That kind of teaching doesn’t happen by accident. It takes what the Greeks called scholē—leisure. Not leisure as in Netflix-and-chill, but the freedom to study, read, watch documentaries, engage with the world, and let ideas ferment over a glass of scotch. To give my students the best, I have to live like a scholar, which, like everything nowadays, is expensive. That’s why I don’t own a car. That’s why I buy maybe one or two pairs of new clothes a year (yes, that includes underwear). Every hour I’m not teaching goes into thinking, studying, travelling, and building the kind of life that feeds back into my lessons.

But here’s the reality: I can’t afford to give my time away for free. And yet I also can’t ignore the fact that if tutoring remains a luxury, it will keep doing what it’s always done: widen the gap between those who can afford it and those who can’t.

So here’s my proposal—a way to make tutoring sustainable for me, accessible for students, and scalable for communities.

The Balancing Act: Fair Pay vs. Accessibility

1. Small-Group Tutoring
Instead of only offering €35/hour for one student, I run 4:1 sessions at €15 each. Students still get far more attention than in a classroom. I earn the same (or more), and suddenly tutoring is affordable for a wider range of families.

2. Hybrid Models (AI + Human)
Daily practice with AI tools keeps costs down. My role becomes coach, curator, and motivator—making sure the "free" AI worksheets and explanations we get by using up valuable drinking water with every prompt are somewhat mitigated. Families save money, but don’t lose the human connection.

3. Partnerships with Schools & Municipalities
Tutoring doesn’t need to stay private. Schools and cities can fund high-dosage tutoring for struggling students. I get paid fairly, students get access, and education shifts from luxury → public service. If you happen to be in a hiring position, please reach out.

4. Advocacy + Mission
Tutoring isn’t just about grades—it’s about equity. Clients who can pay know that when they choose me, they’re not just buying expertise; they’re helping reshape access to education itself. Everyone who supports Born Without Borders helps me keep costs down.

My Mission: Personal, Relational, Accessible

Here’s the evidence that tutoring isn’t just a nice add-on—it’s one of the most powerful educational tools we have:

• Bloom’s 2 Sigma Problem (1984)
  Education researcher Benjamin Bloom ran a groundbreaking study showing that students who received one-on-one tutoring with mastery learning performed, on average, two standard deviations higher than students in traditional classrooms. In plain terms: the “average” tutored student outperformed 98% of the students in a conventional class. That’s not a small tweak — it’s a transformation. Bloom’s finding became known as the “2 Sigma Problem” because the challenge was figuring out how to replicate those results at scale without making one-on-one tutoring exclusive to the wealthy.
• Meta-Analyses: The Consistent Power of Tutoring
  A large-scale meta-analysis of PreK–12 tutoring programs (both one-on-one and small group, delivered by teachers or trained paraprofessionals) found a pooled effect size of 0.37 standard deviations. That may sound small to non-researchers, but in educational terms, it’s a big deal. The gains were especially strong in early grades and when tutoring was built into the school day. The takeaway: across subjects, age groups, and delivery models, tutoring reliably boosts learning outcomes.
• Peer and Small-Group Models: Effective and Scalable
  Tutoring doesn’t have to mean just a private tutor and one student. Peer tutoring (where students teach and support each other under guidance) has been studied extensively. A meta-analysis of 50 studies in mathematics found 88% of cases showed positive effects, with average effect sizes around 0.33–0.38 SD. More recent research in STEM subjects found even stronger results: one 2025 meta-analysis reported an average effect size of 1.23, with other outcomes around 0.40. The key insight: you don’t need one adult per student to see results. Small groups and peer-led formats can be effective.
• Tutoring for Disadvantaged Students
  One of the strongest cases for tutoring is its impact on equity. A review of interventions in New South Wales found that well-structured, frequent tutoring programs for disadvantaged students produced substantial effects, from 0.04 up to 1.17 SD. The largest gains were in mathematics. In other words: tutoring doesn’t just work; it works especially well for the students who need it most.
• Real-World Success: San Francisco’s Chapter One
  Theory aside, tutoring has worked in practice at scale. A daily one-on-one literacy program in San Francisco, called Chapter One, raised literacy rates from 24% to 54% among early readers. The cost? About $500 per student per year. That’s an astonishing return on investment compared to the long-term cost of educational failure.

Summary: Across decades of research and real-world practice, the conclusion is unavoidable: tutoring is one of the single most effective interventions in education. Whether delivered one-on-one, in small groups, by peers, or through structured public programs, it consistently outperforms almost everything else we try. The challenge isn’t if tutoring works — the challenge is making sure it’s accessible to everyone, not just those who can afford it.

The Pitch: How You Can Help

I’m looking for:

• Schools, NGOs, and municipalities ready to integrate tutoring into their programs.
• Organizations and companies willing to adopt a “10-for-1” model: for every ten paid group classes, one free class goes to people who can’t afford it.
• Families and learners who want not just language lessons, but to be part of reshaping access to education.

If tutoring once belonged to the aristocracy, it’s time we reclaimed it for everyone.

Coaching & Classes

Bring your team together to improve not just their English, but their ability to communicate across cultures, share ideas confidently, and collaborate more effectively. We can design sessions around real workplace communication challenges, project discussions, or cross-cultural situations your team is facing.

• Group Classes (#1 Choice for Businesses & Organizations)
• Pairs (Two Students)
• Preply Link (One student) To receive 30% off, click this link first, and then book me.

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