The winner of this battle really depends on how the student learns and the kind of study environment they thrive in. To inform your decision, here are some pros and cons of each to help the student choose the best tutoring format for their needs!
1) Individualised and customised vs Structured and scheduled
What one-on-one tutoring really excels at is its flexibility and the power and control that it gives the student to personalise their experience. Lessons are structured to the student's own pace, and content is taught according to the student's wishes. Whether they need help:
Grasping and learning new information
Developing their skills and focusing on practice questions
Advancing in niche areas such Olympiad training,
it's up to the student to choose.
However, a problem with its flexibility is that it is easy for the student to fall behind and not cover all syllabus requirements. This is what group tutoring's structured lesson plans prevent. Sometimes the rigidity of these classes is necessary to push the student to keep up to date with content being taught. This, of course, depends on how much pressure the student can cope with.
Whilst not as customised as one-on-one tutoring, many group tutoring centres still offer one-on-one help sessions and progress checks, and provide extra resources to help each student achieve their best.
2) One-on-one tutor interaction vs Interaction with peers and a collaborative working environment
One on tutoring provides students who are
Shy and afraid to ask questions in front of a class
Easily distracted by others
Find learning with others very stressful
Struggling or very accelerated
with the complete attention of the tutor. This ensures that they get the most out of their experience as tutors are able to pinpoint and hence eliminate areas of weaknesses. Though, one should be cautious not to be to become too dependent on the tutor through this close tutor to student relationship as to require help for all sorts of problems and assignment tasks!
Whilst not tailored specifically to each student, group tutoring still does their best to place the student in the most appropriate class for their skill level. Moreover, instead of close interaction with the tutor, group tutoring offers the benefit of interaction with other students.
This is good to:
Learn how other students approach and think about questions and problems
Adopt new perspectives and ideas to solve questions
Feel pressure from others to study
Verdict?
At the end of the day, each tutoring format is good in their own way. It all comes down to preference - the student's preferred style of learning and what the student wants to get out of tutoring. One final key factor to consider however is pricing. Generally, one-on-one tutoring is much more costly than group tutoring, so it also depends on how much the student is willing to pay for their studies!
