The Qualified Tutor Podcast

What happens when doing what's best for a student isn't straightforward?

This week, Julia Silver and Qualified Tutor members explore the moral grey areas of everyday tutoring, where professional judgement, parental expectations, financial pressures and students' needs don't always align.

Through real experiences and honest reflection, the conversation tackles:

• Taking students out of school to prepare for high-stakes exams

• Being honest with parents about progress and expectations

• Knowing when you're not the right tutor for a student

• Balancing professional boundaries, income and duty of care

• Speaking up when safeguarding concerns arise

• Making difficult decisions without always knowing the right answer

The conversation arrives at a powerful guiding principle: put the student's best interests first, do no harm, and remain willing to question your own judgement.

With: Julia Silver, Colin Watts, Mia Frost, Claudine Smith, Lucy Mebarki, MJ, Dee Atkins-Greig and Alex Iltchev.

Join QT Conversations every Thursday at Qualified Tutor.

Should you never do for a child what they can do for themselves? This week’s QT Conversations starts with that parenting-class maxim and quickly turns to “it depends.”

Julia Silver and Qualified Tutor members talk about scaffolding as something that responds to the student in front of you on that particular day. Strong relationships are what make that possible.

In this episode:

• Why a scaffold left up too long becomes a cage
• Stripping a task back to the learning objective to protect cognitive load
• Colour-coding, PEAL frames and “What do I see? What do I know?” as scaffolds students can take away and use alone
• Letting students choose how much support they want
• Unconscious competence, and why reflective tutors make it conscious
• Using AI to get feedback on your own sessions
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With: Frankie Atkinson, Alex Iltchev, Lucy Mebarki, Dee Atkins-Greig, Colin Watts, Mia Frost, Margaret Mary McFadyen and MJ.

Join the conversation every Thursday at Qualified Tutor.

Why does the relationship between tutor and student matter—and can learning really flourish without liking, trust and respect?

Julia Silver is joined by Lucy Mebarki, Mia Frost, Margaret Mary McFadyen, Alex Iltchev, Matthew Jones, Graham and Dee Atkins-Greig to explore how strong relationships reduce friction, help students step into the discomfort of learning and lead to better results.

They also share practical approaches to discovery calls, trial sessions, parent communication and playful getting-to-know-you activities—and discuss how to recognise when a tutor, student and family simply aren’t the right match.

What do the proposed SEND reforms actually mean for children, families and tutors?

Hosted by SEND specialist and long-standing Qualified Tutor member Kayleigh Rapson, this QT Conversation explores EHCPs, EOTAS, early intervention, inclusion and the realities facing neurodivergent learners.

The conversation moves beyond policy to a bigger question: are we fixing the existing system, or do we need to rethink the conditions in which children learn?

A thoughtful discussion about barriers to learning, advocacy, individual need and the role tutors can play in creating genuinely inclusive education.

Tutors may be hired to improve grades, but every session teaches something beyond subject knowledge.

Led by Lucy Mebarki, this QT Conversation explores the hidden curriculum of tutoring: the trust, confidence, empathy, resilience and values communicated through the way tutors work. Julia Silver, Alex Iltchev, Mia Frost, Mary-Jane Heckley, Dee Atkins-Greig, Margaret Mary McFadyen and Colin Watts discuss whether mentoring can ever be separated from academic teaching—and how tutors can support the whole student without losing sight of their academic goals.

What do students learn from us beyond the subject we teach?

In this episode, Qualified Tutor members explore:

• How students’ interests can make learning more relevant

• Why trust is essential to academic progress

• Whether tutors are also coaches and mentors

• The tension between supporting the whole student and delivering grades

• How tutors communicate confidence, empathy and resilience

• Responding carefully when students describe difficult experiences at school

• The values tutors model, often without consciously intending to

  
  

Is group tuition simply one-to-one tutoring with more students or classroom teaching with fewer—or does it require an entirely different approach?

In this episode of QT Conversations, Julia Silver is joined by Graham, Colin, Margaret Mary, Lucy, Alex and Mia to explore the opportunities and challenges of tutoring groups. They consider affordability and accessibility, peer learning, learner autonomy and the benefits some students experience when the intensity of one-to-one tuition is reduced.

The conversation also tackles the harder questions. How can tutors identify individual misconceptions within a group? What happens when students will not interact? How do online platforms affect communication and psychological safety? And when does group tutoring become teaching?

Drawing on evidence from the Education Endowment Foundation and experiences across maths, languages and science, the group considers how learning objectives should shape the model. Some students need close attention at their individual point of difficulty; others need access to subject expertise, rich discussion or opportunities to learn with and from their peers.

The conclusion is clear: effective group tuition depends on much more than placing several students in the same session. It requires intentional planning, a safe group culture and thoughtful use of the social dynamics that make group learning distinctive.

In this QT Conversation, Julia Silver and members of the Qualified Tutor community come together to share the resources that genuinely support their tutoring and their businesses.

Using a “give and gain” framework, each tutor brings something useful to share while identifying something they would like help with. The result is a practical, honest conversation covering subject resources, retrieval practice, online teaching, interactive tools, booking systems, content creation and professional development.

The group recommends resources including CGP, Schofield & Sims, Bond, Maths Genie, Corbettmaths 5-a-day, Mathsbox, Physics & Maths Tutor, Revision Village, Save My Exams and BBC Bitesize. They also discuss Quizlet, Quizlet Live, Memrise, Kahoot, Padlet and Wordwall for flashcards, retrieval practice, games and interactive activities.

For online tutoring, the conversation explores Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Zoom, Adobe Connect, TutorCruncher, OpenBoard, Pencil Spaces, ClassIn, FunClass and Lessonspace. Julia explains how she combines Zoom, Google Docs and Canva to create an attractive, flexible and highly interactive experience that can respond to the direction a session takes.

The discussion also considers Riverside for recording, transcription and content creation; Google Drive and OneDrive for organising and sharing work; and Google Calendar, Outlook and Calendly for managing availability and bookings. Document cameras and graphics tablets are suggested as practical ways to preserve handwriting and written interaction during online sessions.

But this episode is not simply a list of tools. The group asks a more important question: how do tutors decide which resources actually deserve their time and money?

They consider accessibility, affordability, ease of use and whether a resource solves a genuine problem. There is a frank warning about the “subscription graveyard” created when attractive free trials turn into a collection of underused paid accounts. Julia also introduces the MoSCoW framework—must have, should have, could have and won’t have—as a way of prioritising resources and protecting limited capacity.

The conversation returns throughout to the value of streamlined tools: resources that may not do everything, but do the important things well. It also acknowledges that even the best platform requires tutors to develop confidence, adapt it thoughtfully and “make it work” for their own practice and students.

Above all, this session demonstrates reciprocity in action. Tutors are colleagues, not competitors, and sharing what works helps everyone make better decisions, strengthen their practice and avoid having to solve every problem alone.

In the first QT Conversation of the 2026–27 academic year, Julia Silver and members of the Qualified Tutor community explore September through the lens of empathy. They discuss what students, parents, schools and tutors may be thinking and feeling as a new term begins, and why relational responsiveness—understanding each learner and adapting accordingly—is at the heart of effective tutoring.

The conversation also explores online tuition, professional boundaries, parental anxiety, student confidence and the integrity involved in recognising when a tutoring relationship is no longer working. It closes with a commitment to curiosity, reciprocity and supporting one another throughout the year.

In this episode of Love Tutoring, we dive into the heart of what truly impactful Continuing Professional Development (CPD) looks like for tutors. From the effectiveness of live vs. self-paced learning to the value of in-person vs. online experiences, this discussion unpacks the formats, tools, and reflective practices that shape meaningful professional growth.

Tune in as members of the QT Conversations community share personal insights into the CPD moments that transformed their tutoring practice, and explore how tools like journals, feedback, and structured reflection can enhance your learning journey.

Whether you're refining your craft or just starting out, this episode offers thoughtful guidance on how to make CPD not just another checkbox—but a powerful catalyst for change.

In this reflective and heartfelt episode of Love Tutoring, host Julia Silver welcomes a lively group of tutors to share the pivotal moments that shaped their journeys into professional tutoring. From finding confidence through challenging sessions to discovering the joy of real connection with students, this conversation dives deep into the personal stories that define what it means to become a tutor.

Listen in as the QT Conversations community discusses formative experiences, the highs and lows of the job, and how each moment of growth brings new insight. Whether you're just starting out or have years of experience, this episode is a celebration of the personal evolution that tutoring demands — and inspires.