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Co-founder of MyTutor, Bertie Hubbard, discusses the benefits that EdTech can offer.
Pearson, the world’s biggest educational publisher, reported an increase of 5% in revenue in the first quarter. This is following a shift towards digital, due to the boom in online learning that the pandemic caused. As businesses recover from the initial disruption from Covid-19, many have moved aspects of their offering online in a bid to retain some revenue. One such company who has benefited from the shift to e-learning is leading online tutoring platform MyTutor who reported a 170% increase in tutees as schools closed last year. with the first day of lockdown seeing the second highest amount of new customers, ever. While EdTech has not solved the problem entirely, it has certainly assisted with making learning more widely accessible and has provided a driving force for positive change in the education space.
MyTutor offers students a way to catch up on their studies with someone who is of a similar age to them and understands what they’re going through. Online tutoring not only provides educational support, but often pastoral support as children are no longer lost in a sea of faces as the one to one learning provides full attention to the student.
In an attempt to level the educational playing field in light of the blatant disparities between children learning from home in the past year, MyTutor offered a range of different resources. As well as providing children with one-to-one learning with a tutor, they also offered free and discounted group tuition for GCSE and A Level age students. This was provided in a bid to reach out to students who needed help but may not have been able to afford full price tuition.
The EdTech platform also held a two week long free careers festival consisting of webinars in which students were able to hear from a range of career, industry and education experts on topics such as entrepreneurship, careers and what it’s like to study various subjects at university level. This provided an opportunity for teens to be asking questions about their own unique career paths at a time where due to the pandemic, they had been prevented from normal access to advice on networking, work experience and career trajectories.
Bertie Hubbard, co-founder of EdTech platform MyTutor, discusses the future role of EdTech and the benefits it can offer:
“EdTech allows us to bring life-changing learning to more kids than ever before. At MyTutor, we provide online tuition that raises kids’ grades, boosts confidence and helps them fulfil their potential in life. Because it’s online, kids get access to amazing tutors from across the country, rather than whoever’s nearby. As there’s no travel for the student or the tutors, it also saves time and money travelling – reducing the cost and stress involved for parents.
Tech also means we can offer high quality learning experiences at a scale not possible offline. Our tutors learn from each other in their online community, and they have access to online training built by teachers. Because they’re subject experts from UK universities, they have recent GCSE and A Level exam experience and up to date curriculum knowledge – perfect for helping teens achieve the best grades they can.
Rather than replacing teachers with robots, the biggest power of EdTech lies in enhancing person-to-person learning. With MyTutor, the emotional impact on kids is huge – they love learning from “cool” older role models, and 88% of students experience a boost in their self-confidence as a result.
We know it works academically too – students improve, on average, by a whole grade (often more) in a term’s worth of lessons. So as we continue to develop our technology we can automate some manual processes such as tutor matching, scheduling lessons and planning lesson content, all the while keeping personal human interaction at the core of online learning.”
