Tutoring is the love that dare not speak its name in official education circles. Unions, government and the DfES all pretend that tutoring is a nasty middle-class disease that undermines their endeavours to create social utopia. Yet parents from across the economic spectrum are voting with their wallets in what has become a huge and largely unregulated market.
Estimates vary, but somewhere between 15 and 45% of government school students will have been tutored privately at some stage during their primary and secondary education. The percentages in schools with good League Table results are the highest, something which seriously undermines the government’s claims that improvement has come about as a result of their educational initiatives like the Literacy Hour, Maths and Science Years, SAT’s, workforce remodelling, Teacher’s TV, etc.
So what do we really know about this market? Firstly the majority of tutors are small outfits, run by teachers who want to earn a bit of extra income (often in cash). Next are the small commercial operations like Select Tutors, Personal Tutors, Fleet Tutors and Tutors International.
Third, are the fast growing international franchise chains like Kumon and Kip Mc Grath. Interestingly both of these companies have come from outside the UK with Kumon originating in Japan and Kip Mc Grath in Australia (where it is listed on the stock exchange and has been one of the best performing small-cap stocks since listing). An interesting newcomer in this area is Explore Centres all of whose computer learning centres are based in a Sainsburys store. Explore was established by Bill Mills, an ex-management consultant whose interest in education was spurred by a visit to a US learning facility located adjacent to a major shopping centre.
The educational software used in all of Explore’s centres come from media giant Pearson and is called SuccessMaker®. SuccessMarker® has been around for sometime and whilst localised versions are used in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UK its benefits are disputed by some educationalists. Regardless of such disputes, Explore Learning seems to have come up with a successful business model that is attracting a lot of attention in the media, amongst parents and in the education community generally. For Sainsbury’s the centres represent a good way to connect with their local community as well as offering a value-added alternative for their customers, rather than having to drag their offspring around the supermarket.
Starting at around £70 per month per child, Explore Centres are not inexpensive, however Kumon charge £45 per month for a single subject and £85 for English and Maths (plus a £15 registration fee).
Kip McGrath’s UK operation do not say how much they charge on their website, but presumably market forces will compel master-franchisees Allan and Lucy Briggs to rectify this in the near future.
With 48,000 UK students Kumon’s monthly minimum UK income is estimated to be more than £2.5m (£30m p.a.)! Internationally Kumon claim to have 3.7m students, a statistic that is creating serious interest in venture capital firms looking at educational businesses supporting out-of-school learning amongst the UK’s 9m primary and secondary school students. With their strong online teaching systems we may well see UK operations for US companies like Sylvan Learning Centres and Oxford Learning. Sylvan Learning Systems who listed on the New York Stock Exchange in May 2004 (ticker symbol SLVN) already operate in the UK, via a higher education joint venture with the University of Liverpool.
