Answer to school's maths problem in India

12 April 2012

A London primary school has become the first to outsource maths teaching to India.

Pupils at Ashmount Primary in Islington who have fallen behind are given one-to-one tuition over the internet.

Pupils are given a headset and log on to a website where they interact with their tutor 4,000 miles away in India. The service, used by
11-year-olds, costs £12 an hour, compared with the £40 an hour a private tutor would cost in London.

Assistant headteacher Rebecca Stacey said: "We quickly realised it was having a positive impact and increased it so half of our Year 6 pupils are using it."

She said the school now intends to expand its use of the system to other year groups.

Entrepreneur Tom Hooper set up the service, which is called BrightSpark Education. The business employs more than 100 Indian tutors full time. They all undergo security checks and are maths graduates with teaching experience, and all the tutors are trained in the English maths curriculum at key stages 2,3 and 4.

Mr Hooper told the Times Educational Supplement: "I was a tutor myself to make a bit of extra money when I was at university after I graduated. But paying for additional tuition can be very expensive, in London you can be spending up to £40 an hour. So it just seemed to make sense when I thought of providing live learning online, which could be flexible and engaging."

Dylan William, director of London University's Institute of Education, said there are a few potential problems with the system. Speaking about the tutors, he said: "It will depend on how good their English is. They will also need to understand the cultural conventions of this country. For example, long division is laid out differently in different countries."

But he added that he expects the system to become popular across the country. He said: "If brain surgery can be done remotely, why not maths teaching? As with many things in education, it's not a silly idea, but as we have discovered in recent years, a lot of things that appeared to be good ideas at the time turn out to be useless or worse."

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