He's got a daughter about the same age as my eldest, and like us, she's just gone through her SATs. If you've been through this with your own child, you'll know there's a fair bit of pressure on them at this age. The tests, the expectations, the "how did it go" questions from every relative within a fifty-mile radius. My son, thankfully, doesn't struggle much at school. He gets on with it, does his homework (eventually, after some negotiating), and seems to muddle through fine.
So there we were, two dads, same age kids, same milestone just gone, and somehow we'd had completely different experiences of the whole thing.
He started telling me how tough it had been. His daughter's been struggling, properly struggling with Sats, and as much as the school wanted to help, there's only so much they can do when a teacher's got thirty kids in a class and a budget that seems to shrink every year. It's not that anyone wasn't trying. It's just that there wasn't enough of them, or enough hours in the day, to give her the one-to-one attention she needed.
It got me thinking about something I don't think gets talked about enough: it's genuinely hard to know if your child is struggling at school. They don't always tell you. They might say "it's fine" when it's very much not fine. And even when you do start to suspect something's not right, there's a part of you that doesn't want to accept it. Nobody wants to think their child needs extra help. It can feel like an admission of something, even though it absolutely isn't.
That conversation reminded me of something else. A colleague of mine, his wife was a primary school teacher for years. Properly experienced, the kind of teacher who actually changes how kids feel about learning. She loved it. It was her vocation, not just a job. But she ended up leaving the classroom altogether to set up her own tutoring business.
When he explained why his wife Tara had left, it made a lot of sense. She adored teaching, but she was fighting a losing battle against class sizes that kept growing and resources that kept shrinking. It got to the point where she felt like she couldn't actually do the job properly anymore, not the way she wanted to, not the way the kids deserved. So, she made the leap and started tutoring small groups at home instead, where she could actually focus on each child.
I'll be honest, my own lad's never needed anything like that. He's been fine. But hearing my mate talk about his daughter and then thinking about Tara and why she made such a big change, it dawned on me that "fine" isn't where every kid is at. There are loads of children quietly struggling, with parents who maybe haven't clocked it yet, or have clocked it but don't know what to do about it. And that's exactly the gap that someone like Tara fills.
This is why I want to give a shout out to Tutored by Tara, an independent tutor based in Guiseley. Tara offers face-to-face Maths and English tutoring for Years 1 to 6, in small groups of no more than four children. That number matters. It's small enough that every child actually gets seen, gets heard, and gets help that's tailored to where they're at, not just where the curriculum says they should be.
She's DBS checked, properly set up, and based locally in Guiseley, so it's easy to get to without turning your evenings into a taxi service across West Yorkshire.
If my conversation over coffee taught me anything, it's that you genuinely never know who needs a bit of extra support until you ask, or until they tell you. So have that conversation with your own kids. Ask them properly. And if it turns out they could do with a bit of help, you know where to look.
Get in touch with Tara at tutoredbytara@outlook.com or have a look at her Instagram page (Tutored by Tara).
Your kid's "fine" might be brilliant. Or it might just be them not wanting to worry you. Worth finding out which, though.
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