Hyderabad: Demand for home tutors goes up despite online classes

Hyderabad: The number of parents seeking home tutors is increasing for the past two months, alongside ongoing online schooling.

LVS Sastry, who teaches mathematics but is currently working as an education administrator said, "There is a mixed feelings among parents regarding the physical reopening of classes and also about online schooling.Parents are emotionally attached to children and consider the well-being of their wards as the top of their priority. But, at the same time, there is a lurking fear among them about Covid-19."

Particularly the repeated information flashing about the third wave of Covid is triggering fear. Many parents feel that the online classes were not doing justice to their children. Parents are engaging home tutors for all subjects, including, languages like Telugu for all classes from Class V onwards.

"An online class goes for 60 minutes. Out of this, 45 minutes was going for teachers to take class on a specific subject topic. The last 15 minutes were earmarked for clearing doubts," he said. However, out of a class of 60, very few only could get the benefit of getting their doubts cleared. This is making the parents seek home tutors.

Secondly, earlier, they were not seeking home tutors feeling they might be potential carriers of Covid. Now, parents have been mustering the courage after the lock down norms were lifted, and everyone going to offices and businesses as usual.

N Rami Reddy, another home tutor said that there are three kinds of parents, those who are illiterate; households in which both parents go for jobs and lastly, household where one of the parents is a bread earner.

"The first kind of parents is lacking awareness. And, most of them want to send their kids to school physically. For, they are not able to afford to provide gadgets to their children for online classes.

The second kind of parents, where wife and husband go to jobs and are leaving children with a mobile, laptop, tab or desktop alone to attend the online classes is seen as a potential threat. Such a situation might make children potentially getting addicted to the internet. In turn, it might expose them to become victims of online threats.

Such parents also preferred physical reopening of schools under the strict supervision of adhering to the Covid guidelines."

However, some of them want to engage home tutors so that children are not totally addicted to online, he added.

The third kind of parent was the most among those seeking home tutors. They are mainly interested in not sending their children immediately even after the reopening of the schools.

Thus, while allowing online classes, they wanted their children to be well versed in the subjects. They want to compensate for the loss that children feel due to online education.