A Year in Review
2023
We've analysed over 65,428 hours of online tuition from the 2022-2023 academic year to give insight into why students start tuition, how it impacts outcomes and how it's being used by students.
1
How effective is it?
What grade improvements does the average student make? And how is this related to their tutor and the month they start revision?
2
Why are students starting tuition?
Is it usually the parent or student's choice? What were the reasons for starting?
3
How is tuition being used?
When are students having lessons and how many subjects does the average student learn on Sherpa?
4
Subjects and Cost
What subjects are people learning on Sherpa? And how much does the average lesson cost?
5
Online vs In-Person
Which takes the crown? What do students and tutors prefer?
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Environmental benefit
How does switching to online tuition benefit the planet? How much CO2 has Sherpa saved this year?
1
How effective is online tuition?
We surveyed over 100 parents and students to find out if they felt online tuition had positively impacted their grades and confidence. We have broken this down to find out what grade improvements you can expect by taking lessons on Sherpa.
Do you believe your tuition on Sherpa has positively impacted your learning?
We subjectively asked parents and students if they feel their tuition helped their learning. This could either be through measurable grade improvements, or a confidence boost!
98% of students on Sherpa feel that online tuition has positively impacted their learning! This is fantastic, but we want to show measurable, quantitative evidence showing a positive correlation between lessons on Sherpa and reported grade improvements.
What grade improvements can you achieve from using Sherpa?
We asked students what grade they had received most recently before starting tuition on Sherpa, vs their attained grades after their final exams. Here's what we found.
A term of tuition on Sherpa improves student's grades by...
2
grades on average.
How students use online tuition varies - some have regular lessons throughout the year and others
have lessons on specific topics they’re struggling with in the run-up to exams..
But grade improvements aren't the only reason that parents choose to find a tutor for their child.
Confidence has been shown to be one of the leading indicators of academic success.
That's why we asked parents to rank their child's confidence before starting tuition and after completing their exams in each subject they got help in, and the results are huge.
Here’s where the average student’s confidence ranked before tuition...
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5
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9
10
Not Confident At All
Very Confident
And here's after their Sherpa tuition:
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9
10
Not Confident At All
Very Confident
The average confidence level increased from 4.1 to 7.6! Spending as little as a few hours with a qualified teacher to ask those questions that they don't get the opportunity to ask in class can help settle any nerves around a subject.
'Spaced repetition' or 'cramming' - what works better?
We were really interested in how the month that a student starts tuition affects their grade improvements. We broke down the months in which a student started their online tuition to see the impact it had on their grade improvement...
1
Starting in...
September to December
improved grades by
2.02
points on average.
2
Starting in...
January to March
improved grades by
1.84
points on average.
3
Starting in...
March to May
improved grades by
1.51
points on average.
As expected, starting revision earlier in the year results in much higher grade improvements.
Spaced repetition has repeatedly been shown to be more effective than
cramming for exams.
Despite this, students who started later in the year, perhaps for some exam practice with an examiner,
still saw vast grade improvements.
What about exam stress?
Exam stress has been on the rise in recent years, likely due to the return of in-person exams in the post-COVID world. As you'll find below, lots of our students and parents first look for a tutor to get help from an examiner and practice their exam technique.
How has Sherpa helped with this?
Sherpa was created to give more students access to high-quality, affordable online tuition. We're building a platform that makes teaching, learning
and revising easier through one online, convenient platform.
So, we asked our users what their favourite things about Sherpa were.
We've plotted a 'Polar Area Chart', which shows the popularity of each choice. The 'magnitude' shows the average importance of that factor (with 5 being the most important) and the percentage value being what % of people put this option in their top 5 selections.
Here's what our students and parents responded with...
Hover over a segment to see the reason.
And here's what our tutors responded with...
Hover over a segment to see the reason.
2
Why do students start tuition?
What prompts students or parents to look for a tutor?
There is a huge number of reasons as to why a student or parent might begin looking for a tutor. We asked our users why they began their search.
Hover over a bar to see the reason.
Students struggle to get the targeted and personalised feedback they need in larger class sizes, which gives
them little time to receive feedback on their practice questions.
Dedicated time with a 1:1 private online tutor allows students to receive feedback from experienced
examiners who know what the markers are looking for.
Who first suggested looking for a tutor?
Is it usually the student who recognises they could do with some additional help? Or does a parent or guardian usually encourage their student to start some 1:1 tuition? Or sometimes, a platform such as Sherpa is recommended by a friend or family.
The majority of the time, it was the parent or guardian who began the search for the tutor.
What were the most important factors that were considered when looking for a tutor?
When browsing Sherpa's find an online tutor page,
what were the things that were the most important to our students?
We've plotted a 'Polar Area Chart', which shows the popularity of each choice. The 'magnitude' shows the average
importance of that factor (with 5 being the most important) and the percentage value being what % of people put this
option in their top 5 selections.
Hover over a segment to see the reason.
Fortunately for Sherpa, Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) came out as the most valued factor, whilst tutoring experience was
the most popular choice (over 70% of people added this to their top 5 choices). Some other factors that appeared frequently across the board were exam board experience and lesson cost.
Sherpa focuses on on-boarding highly-qualified and experienced tutors. We charge a lower platform fee than our competitors. This allows students to receive tuition from a highly
qualified tutor for less than you’d pay to receive tuition from a poorly-qualified equivalent on another platform.
3
How is online tuition being used?
How many subjects does the average student learn on Sherpa?
Are students using Sherpa for support in one subject they're struggling with? Or as a more general support tool to work alongside schooling?
The average student seems to use online tuition as a way to target a particular weak area they're not getting enough support with in school.
When are students having tuition?
When are the most popular times of day to get 1:1 support? Are most students having tuition on the weekends or after school?
This heatmap cannot be shown on mobile.
Straight after school on weekdays is the most popular time for lessons! Weekends are popular too, but lessons are more evenly spread throughout the day.
4
Subjects and Cost
What were the most popular subjects to learn online? And how much does the average lesson cost on Sherpa?
What was the subject breakdown?
Shown for the top 20 most popular subjects.
Nearly two-thirds of all lessons are in the core subjects (Maths, Science and English).
How much does the average lesson on Sherpa cost?
The cost of a lesson tends to increase as you move to more advanced levels. This is because the availability of tutors decreases:
5
Online vs In-Person Tuition
It’s been over 3 years since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite some seeing online tuition as a temporary measure during lockdowns, the popularity of
online tuition has soared in the years since and a large percentage of students are opting to stick with
learning online due to the numerous benefits.
What do our students have to say?
Do you prefer online or in-person tuition?
From those on Sherpa that had previously tried in-person tuition, we asked whether they would go back to in-person tuition after trying online. We found that only 12.7% of users would want to return to in-person:
which is thanks to the following benefits, as indicated by our users...
This tells us the most popular features of online tuition are a better choice of tutors (since you can find a tutor from anywhere in the world!), more convenient lessons (due to the lack of travel time) and cheaper lessons (thanks to the increased efficiency).
How do students use their lesson recordings?
One of the main benefits of learning on Sherpa is the ability to re-watch your lesson recordings. This allows you to re-watch any explanations or practice questions you've covered in a lesson. But how are students using this functionality? Are they regularly revising their lessons, or just watching specific sections when in need of a recap?
There's a strong mix as to how students are using their notes and recordings for revision, but the most popular reason is to sporadically revise certain areas they're struggling with.
How do students, parents and tutors rate the effectiveness of online tuition?
We asked our users whether they think online tuition is less, as, or more, effective than in-person tuition. This is what they said:
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Less Effective
More Effective
On average, our users have said that they find online tuition to be more effective than in-person! Combine this with all of the additional benefits, and online tuition comes out as the clear winner.
6
The Environmental Benefits
Alongside the academic benefits to switching to online tuition, we're proud that our students and tutors are making a positive change to reduce their environmental impact.
This year, our students and tutors have prevented around...
81,406
kgs
of CO2 emissions being emitted into the atmosphere.
At the same time, we've saved just under...
2
years
worth of travelling for in-person lessons.
Which translates to...
480,000
miles
not travelled (helping to reduce traffic!)
What was our sample size?
We collected responses from 206 tutors, parents and students who use Sherpa. This group was made up of 101 tutors, 62 parents and 43 students.