Not only does it offer funding and other opportunities for young people, it now has over 30,000 individuals networking via its website, and a magazine offering up-to-date insight into working in the creative industries.

Just recently, Maddie York wrote an article on the concept of “Teach Second” – the idea that tutoring in its many forms is emerging as a secondary income for those in the early stages of breaking into the creative professions.

She writes, ‘In my circle of friends and contacts, I have a couple of concert pianists who are earning money by teaching piano, an artist who gives workshops, an author and academic who teaches English, and a playwright who works in an inflatable planetarium presenting science shows to children’.

The article goes on to recommend The Tutor Pages as a good place to get advice on setting up as a private tutor.

You can read the rest of her article here – why not consider joining the Ideas Tap community while you’re there?

You can check it out on Trixi’s Lulu page – perhaps a good stocking filler?

As an aside, I also recommend that tutors have a look at Trixi’s own page on The Tutor Pages: it’s a really great example of using our site’s features to the full. In fact, Trixi wrote to me to say that she ‘enjoyed putting all my extra bits and pieces on the site. It works very well and there are lots of different spaces to put various resources. Well done for a very user-friendly site’.

Yesterday we officially launched our private tuition jobs board: Tutors Wanted.

Any student, parent, school or other organisation can post a request for tuition, and conversely, any tutor or teacher can reply to requests.

The service is free for both the enquirer and respondent (tutors not registered with us can answer requests by creating a free Basic Account), and everyone can keep up-to-date with the latest job opportunities by following The Tutor Pages on Twitter.

Even we’ve been surprised by the popularity of Tutors Wanted in its first week: it’s supposed to be the holiday season!

Just check out the new tutor jobs feature for yourself here:

http://www.thetutorpages.com/tutor-jobs

September is the ‘back to school’ month, and is traditionally an ultra-busy period for private tuition as well.  Enquiries increase not only for school subjects, but also for other areas such as musical instrument tuition and adult language lessons. The fact is, most people end their summer break with the sense of a fresh start, and renewed enthusiasm for learning.

On top of this natural seasonal surge in interest, at The Tutor Pages we’re especially excited: that’s because enquiries reached record levels for us in September, with almost 1200 genuine enquiries sent to our tutors. Moreover, this figure excludes the enquiries made to tutors who include their own websites in their profiles.

This success is not surprising when you consider that The Tutor Pages has recently been performing well in search engine results for a large number of relevant search terms. Why not try it out? We invite tutors to think of a relevant search for their subject, such as gcse english tutor leeds.

You can see our statistics for yourself at www.thetutorpages.com/monthly-stats.

I’ve recently had a number of enquiries from would-be tutors wondering what’s most important when setting up as a tutor. After a bit of thought, I’ve created a quick checklist which I thought I’d share: our five top tips for successful tutoring.

1. Establish your credibility.

Tutoring is an unregulated market in the UK, so you’ll need to establish yourself as a competent and reliable professional.

First, you should consider getting references from trusted individuals – perhaps an employer or university tutor. An up-to-date CV and any testimonials from previous students or parents will also help.

In addition, make sure you understand fully the issues surrounding child protection. If parents ask you, ‘Do you have a CRB certificate?’ and you don’t have one, make sure you have a ready answer. If the term CRB mystifies you, then read up on it in our e-book!

2. Get clear on exams.

If you’re tutoring an examination subject, obtain up-to-date information from the exam board as early as possible. While textbooks can be motivating and helpful in many ways, they are often surprisingly weak at explaining the exam itself.

Get in touch with the exam board and you’ll obtain all sorts of essential information, including specifications, syllabuses, notes for teachers, past question papers, mark schemes and reports on the examinations. Much of this information is available for free download from their websites.

3. Consider using a learning agreement.

Tutors differ in their opinion on whether it’s necessary to have a written agreement between the tutor and parent/ student. We would argue that a written agreement raises expectations all round, and demonstrates that you’re a professional. Even if you don’t use a written agreement, you should get very clear on your payment and cancellation terms – unless you want to be taken for a ride.

We provide more information on learning agreements (including a sample you could use) in our e-book.

4. Promote yourself.

There are various aspects to the promotion of your tutoring services. First of all, are you going to join an agency or use an advertising platform such as thetutorpages.com? Agencies can be a great way to gain credibility as a tutor, but they’ll also charge a commission for each hour that you teach.

Writing an article or two on your subject is also a good way to promote yourself, since it demonstrates that you’re an expert in your field. Thetutorpages.com lets you submit up to 4 articles on your expertise.

Finally, consider how you’re going to handle the initial contact with a student or parent. Given the choice between email or phone, always try to make a phone call. There are various reasons for this, not least that it shows you’re a real person to be trusted, not someone hiding behind technology.

5. Understand effective teaching.

How many tutors actually stop to consider whether they’re teaching effectively? In our e-book, we use the latest research to help you understand how to be the very best.

Since we can’t go into the details here, here’s a list of effective teacher characteristics adapted from Munn et al (1990). See whether you agree!

humorous, relaxed, imaginative, warm, firm, listens, fair, friendly, enthusiastic, organized, supportive, cheerful, flexible, encourages, sympathetic, responsive, enjoys the subject, makes work relevant, helps pupils learn, uses various methods, has high expectations, explains clearly, gives praise, applies sanctions fairly

Recently in the news we hear that a new security alarm has been launched that ‘emits a piercing, high decibel female scream designed to shock and disorientate an attacker’. The alarm is being promoted by M&S and can be purchased here.

Safety is of paramount importance for all concerned when contacting strangers through the internet. The case in August of the fake gumtree car advert used to attack and rob a victim is a recent reminder of this.

Our free guide for tutors covers tutor safety in some depth. Topics covered include child safety, professional boundaries, meeting up for the first time, appropriate insurance and email scams.

In addition, we provide prominent safety advice to parents and students who contact our tutors online. Indeed, parents and students must check a box indicating they’ve read our safety advice before contacting a potential tutor.

Two of our favourite sources of expertise on the topic of internet and personal safety are the charities The Suzy Lamplugh Trust and Kidscape. The former advises on all aspects of personal safety, while the latter is focused on child safety.

Under the Government’s new Vetting and Barring Scheme, every adult who has regular contact with children outside their family will have to register on a state database. Each individual will then be assessed by officials in terms of the risk they pose to children.

This is simply not true. There are many circumstances where registration on the ‘state database’ will not be required – one massive industry being private tuition. That’s right: self-employed private tutors who are employed by parents are not required to register on the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) database.

The ISA needs desperately to make its role much clearer in order to prevent both media and public over-reaction.

But as far as private tutors are concerned, it’s very much business as usual. As we’ve tried to make clear all along, self-employed tutors neither need a so-called CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) check, nor do they need to belong to the new ISA database. Although it may well be in a tutor’s interests to voluntarily register with the ISA (to demonstrate an added level of credibility to parents), it is not a legal requirement.

When compiling information for our e-book on tutoring, we contacted the ISA for guidance on this topic. John Sheridan of the DCSF clarified the relationship between the ISA and the private tuition sector for us, and a short interview with him can be found in our e-book. This is what he had to say:

It’s true that self-employed regulated activity providers working for parents will not be required to register with the ISA, because parents will not be required to check these individuals’ ISA registration status. Parliament decided in effect that it would not be appropriate to criminalise parents for not making checks, and it follows that there should be no requirement on the regulated activity provider to register. The online check will be quick and free, and we hope that market pressure from parents wanting to do the check will, over time, lead increasingly to self-employed providers registering with the ISA.

Any tutor or parent who needs to obtain more information on this topic can download our free e-book here.

Moreover, the actual number of enquiries is significantly higher than 10,000 – that’s because this figure excludes enquiries made to some tutors who have included their own website on our Pages.

Unlike a simple classifieds site, we take care to check every enquiry that’s made through the The Tutor Pages to make sure it’s genuine. We now even have the technology to monitor exactly which tutors, which subjects and which areas are doing the best. That means we can adjust our advertising campaigns to make sure all of our registered tutors are happy with the number of enquiries that are coming through to them.

For more on The Tutor Pages statistics, see our monthly stats page. Or see how The Tutor Pages works.

The article draws on the wealth of information in our e-book Tutoring: The Complete Guide, which is available for free download from The Tutor Pages website.