Educator wants parents to invest in private tutoring

An education director says now is a good time for parents to invest in private tutoring especially within the COVID-19 environment.

Director at the Bright Sparks academy Brandon Dowell says too that he is doing his utmost best to ensure parents have access to quality tutoring outside of the classroom.

“The goal is to give students an awareness of where they are at. Due to the pandemic a lot of students have lost ground [academically] and the first step to put them back on track is awareness,” he said.

During a pop-up at Sky Mall, Haggett Hall, on Saturday in conjunction with the Sandy Crest Medical Center, Dowell told Barbados TODAY that he was offering free learning assessments with a primary focus on reading and writing. He said many parents came out mainly querying about the level their children are at.

“Most parents when they come they are  just not aware of where the child is as they know that they are having difficulties but they are just not aware of the extent of the difficulties. So for them it is just a feeling of relief knowing where the child is at,” he said.

The seven-year-old operation was started because Dowell says he needed lessons personally while going to school and saw the benefits of having a teacher volunteer to give him the specialization that he needed.

Parent Katrina Haynes, who waited in line for her son to be assessed, says that it was very difficult with her son — a primary school student — during the pandemic but she was impressed with Dowell’s assessment.

“I am very impressed. In fifteen minutes they did a slight assessment on my son and told me which areas he would fall short in, which is accurate to what his teacher was saying to me for the past year, so now he is going to join them and hopefully the techniques used would at least help him to progress in school,” she said.

“He has not adjusted well with the online platform. I actually had to enroll him with a private tutor during this whole pandemic to get the one-on-one attention,” she added.

Another parent, Camille Clarke, says she decided to stop by the Bright Sparks pop-up because her daughter was having challenges retaining information and she thought it was a good opportunity to seek out Dowell for expert advice.

“I see the [necessity] of private tutoring because of the online environment and the children not being able to focus as they would usually in the face-to-face setting,” she said.

Clarke added that it is a great investment to have private tutoring outside of the school environment. (MR)