Academic support is widely available nowadays. A lot of people, including parents and students, have the wrong idea of what academic support is. So what is it? Is it what you need for your child or yourself? It’s important to know that academic support includes a number of different tutoring services and which services aren’t included. Superprof is getting to the crux of the matter and finding out what academic support is and what other types of tutoring there are.
What Is Academic Support?
When you hear the terms academic support, you probably already have a decent idea of what it is. A private tutor sat in their student's home across the desk from those being tutored.
“The term academic support may refer to a wide variety of instructional methods, educational services, or school resources provided to students in the effort to help them accelerate their learning progress, catch up with their peers, meet learning standards, or generally succeed in school.”
There are two important factors that we believe also defines academic support:
- The duration: Academic support can occur at regular intervals. From a few lessons over several weeks to a much longer time. The tutor could help their student over the course of several months to an entire school year.
- Complementing schooling: A lot of academic support services are designed to help students who are struggling or falling behind.
This doesn't mean that it needs to take place during the semester, you can get academic support during the school holidays. There's nothing wrong with a bit of extra preparation. Discover the benefits of academic support!
The Origins of Academic Support
It’s difficult to talk exactly about where exactly academic support came from. For those not familiar with private academic support, you probably remember all the hours you spent studying in primary school, secondary school, college, and sixth form. Many hours of your schedule were spent dedicated to studying, revising, or doing your homework or coursework.
- Mothers, unlike previous generations, are more likely to be working.
- Parents are getting home from work later and later, which leaves very little time for them to help their children with their studies.
Private Education for State School Students
The success of academic support is not just down to how effective it is but also due to increasingly worried parents. With mathematics, foreign languages (French, Spanish, German, Italian, etc.), history, geography, physics, chemistry, economics, and English, there are so many subjects for parents to be worried about. Some parents believe that there are too many subjects and children are struggling to keep up with all of them. This means more and more parents are enlisting the help of academic support tutors to help their children keep up by providing supplemental instruction. This is why we say that academic support is private education for children at state schools. Find out how parents, tutors and students all work together to achieve academic success... Even if you’re hesitant, there are plenty of students who’ve benefitted from academic support. It’s helped many students to catch up with their studies. This has helped then avoid failing exams and having to resist them.
There are academic support classes for those in primary school, secondary school, sixth form, and college. They complement a child’s regular schooling. For example, a private tutor can move away from the traditional teaching a child gets in school and help them see schooling differently.
They can use different resources and tools. This freedom allows them to draw on different school subjects to help the child understand better, too. Finally, the biggest benefit of academic support tutorials is the fact that they’re tailored to the student. In a maths class at school, the teacher has to deliver a standardised lesson for all the students. This means the class is designed for twenty-odd students. With academic support, the private tutor plans their lesson around the person in front of them.
- What is the student’s level?
- How much do they understand?
- What kind of personality do they have?
- Do they respect authority?
- Are they keen learners?
- Are there certain things they struggle with?
Academic support is there to fill in the gaps. If calculus, algebra, geometry, or trigonometry is giving you a headache, you just have to look for maths tutoring. Find out how you can get customised tutoring for your academic needs!
Academic Support: From Homework Help to Catching Up
For those who still aren’t quite sure what kind of academic support they need, keep in mind that it can include a huge range of services. If you want to succeed, you're going to have to study. But what can you do when it doesn't seem to be working?
Educational Accompaniment
We’ve already seen what academic support is and what services it includes. There’s also educational accompaniment which is often thought of as academic tutoring. How is different to academic support? Educational accompaniment is more so for students aiming to get into top universities. This can take place over a long time. It can take a student through their undergraduate or postgraduate degree. There are private tutors offering educational accompaniment. We’re talking about support for students who aren’t struggling. Those with acceptable or good grades. The goals are simple:
- Improve their grades
- Getting them ready for top universities
- Studying for important exams
- Getting them onto courses at said universities
Educational accompaniment, just like academic tutoring and private tutorials, is available in all subjects from the sciences to the humanities. If science isn't your strong point, why not consider getting a physics, biology, or chemistry tutor to help?
Private Tutorials
It’s very easy to confuse academic support with private tutorials. They are often quite similar. However, not all tutors can offer both.