How Much Does Tutoring Actually Move a Grade?
Roughly a grade in three months, when the conditions hold. Here are the conditions.
Every centre in Hong Kong advertises improvement. Almost none will tell you what determines it, which is the part you can actually act on.
What a realistic improvement looks like
| Time | Typical movement | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| 6 weeks | Little on the grade, visible in marked work | Technique: command terms, answer structure, working shown |
| 3 months | About one grade | Technique consolidated plus the first content gaps closed |
| 6 months | One to two grades | Content rebuilt, papers finished within time |
| 12 months | Two grades is realistic, more is unusual | Foundations rebuilt rather than patched |
Across our students, roughly a letter grade over three months of consistent weekly work is the pattern, with around 80% reaching A or A* at IGCSE and most IB students landing 6s and 7s in tutored subjects. Those are averages over students who did the work between lessons, which is doing a lot of load-bearing.
What actually determines it
In descending order of impact, which is not the order parents usually assume.
- Work done between lessons. By a distance. Two hours a week with practice beats four hours without it.
- How early you start. Twelve months out, foundations can be rebuilt. Six weeks out, only technique can be improved.
- Whether the diagnosis was right. Tutoring the wrong thing well produces nothing.
- Whether the student wants to be there. Tutoring multiplies effort. It does not create it.
- The tutor. Real, and fifth. A good tutor with a student doing no practice loses to an average tutor with a student who works.
Where the cheapest marks are
Improvement rarely comes from the subject a student finds hardest. It comes from:
- Command terms and answer structure. Fastest available gain, and it transfers to every subject at once.
- Coursework. The IA is 20% of an IB subject, done with months of runway and no exam pressure. See Internal Assessment help.
- The subject sitting just below a grade boundary. Usually the cheapest single grade available.
- Turning a reliable 6 into a 7, which is often easier than lifting a 4 to a 5.
How to tell in six weeks
Set the measure before you start, and make it something other than whether your child seems more confident.
- A timed past paper at the start, and another six weeks later. Same conditions, marked the same way. This is the only measure that is hard to fool.
- Errors categorised as content, technique or carelessness. A tutor who cannot tell you which dominates is not diagnosing.
- Work happening between lessons. If nothing is, stop and fix that first. More sessions will not help.
If nothing has moved after three months of consistent work, change something. That may mean changing tutor, and it may mean accepting the problem is not one tutoring solves.