As an owner of your own tuition business, tutors will present you with many challenges. One of these challenges includes them not turning up at the tuition centre. The common reason is sickness and holidays. 

Other reasons include lateness. For more details, you can check out my blog on How To Deal With Tutor Lateness And What Steps You Can Take. 

In my time running tuition centres, there have been countless incidents where tutors have not turned up due to sickness and holidays. This is very normal. If you aren’t used to it, well, get used to it. In such situations, there isn’t much you can do. You just have to get on with it and sympathise with their illness. ‘What else do you think you can do?’ ‘Are you going to ask them for proof of sickness?’ Of Course not. 

So why is this a problem? It’s because many tuition businesses are not ready for it. One should be ready for when this happens. You have to have a solution because running a tuition business is not like running a private school. Check out my blog 5 Reasons Why Running A Tuition Business Is Nothing Like Running A Private School, where I’ve explained this in more detail.

First, we need to understand how things are different for private schools. It’ll be a lot easier to understand when I explain it here in more detail. 

Unlike tuition centres, private schools have many options. 

1. They can reach out to agencies for a supply teacher. Agencies supply schools with teachers all the time – it’s a very lucrative business. 
2. They can look to use another teacher from within the school.
3. They normally have teacher assistants in every class, who can take charge when the teacher is not available. 

I understand the pain of tuition business owners, and how they feel when tutors do not turn up, especially when you’re asking for a commitment for a few hours in a week. You think to yourself ‘It’s only 3 to 4 hours a week, how hard can it be to commit and turn up to work?’ I’ve been in this situation numerous times, and as a tuition business owner myself, I understand how frustrating and annoying it can be.

To paint a picture of doom and gloom – once at the tuition centre, a few tutors called in sick. As always, you couldn’t do anything about the situation; you just had to get on with it. At the time, I was very new to running my tuition business, so I didn’t know what to do. I desperately needed tutors, otherwise I had to cancel some lessons that day. I had to find a way to deliver lessons, otherwise I would have had to send students back; meaning a loss in income. 

Luckily, given my experience tutoring, I stepped in to teach. I had to teach not only one but two classes simultaneously. ‘What?’ Yes, you heard that right. Two classes simultaneously. I had to. I didn’t have a choice. 

Both classrooms were opposite to each other, which helped. I started in one, and then worked my way across to the other, and then back to the first. I kept on ping-ponging between the two rooms for two hours. But somehow I managed to pull through.  

Looking back at it, what I did was hysterical. Just imagine a teacher ping-ponging from one class to the other. But we didn’t have a choice. Had students flagged what was going on to their parents, I’m sure I would have had many complaints. 

Sitting down and writing this story now, I do think how far I’ve come in managing and running my tuition business. How many improvements I’ve made to make it better.  

Over the years, through experience and my failings, I’ve managed to come up with practical solutions that work. Luckily, none of you will need to be ping-ponging between classrooms like I did. 

So let me share these solutions and what needs to be done.

Dealing With Tutor Sick Leave

Unlike tutor holidays, sickness is something that you can’t plan for. It just happens. But you can be prepared for it. So just need to be ready for when it happens. 

There are three things you can do here:

• Managers step in to teach – Managers at your tuition centre should not only be managers but also tutors with sound experience. If anything, you want your managers to be tutors who can teach multiple subjects. E.g. Maths, English, Science etc, at different levels. That way they can always step in as ‘supply’ tutors when needed. That’ll help you resolve a lot of issues in the future going forward.
  
• Back-up exam – For every class that you run, make sure there is a printed backup copy of an exam for each student; ready to be used in case a tutor doesn’t turn up. This way you can throw in a ‘surprise’ exam to the students. We know why we’re doing it, but they don’t know, do they? It’ll work in our favour if it does get to it.  The backup exam strategy will help in the following ways:
  • assess students’ capabilities and check up on their progress, which can later be fed back to the parents as goodwill to differentiate from the competition. 
  • help with face-saving as the tutor was unable to teach
  • and still be able to charge students for the lesson attended

• Merge your class with another – You might be able to merge your existing class with a class that’s already taking place (with a tutor in it). For instance, let’s say a Maths tutor for the Year 10 class didn’t turn up. You might be able to send these Year 10 students to a Year 11 Maths class, instead of it being run by another / or supply tutor. GCSE content is very similar; hence as a one-off, you would be okay doing that. You save money this way too as you won’t have to pay wages to an extra tutor. 

Dealing With Tutor Holidays / Leave

Tutor holidays are a lot better than sick leave. I’ll take this situation any day, as they are ‘normally’ planned. 

I’ve had my share of challenges with tutor holidays, but the most common situation that you will get is that some tutors ‘tell’ you that they are going on holiday, as opposed to ‘requesting’ a holiday. Both are very different situations for obvious reasons, but it’s when they ‘tell’ you that they are going on holiday, that makes things difficult as there is no flexibility. I don’t mind the ‘telling’, so long as they ‘tell’ me in advance and give me enough notice. 

Make a note of their attitude in the back of your mind for the future. As you begin to understand their personalities, you realise it’ll help you to deal with them in other matters going forward. This we can talk about for another time, but for now back to the tips on dealing with tutor holidays.

Here are 5 tips I would advise everyone to follow when it comes to dealing with tutor leave:

1. Ask for enough notice – Embed a culture of clear communication when tutors are requesting for holiday so that enough notice is given to you and your team. Anything in advance of 4 weeks should be good. This will give you ample amount of time to plan things accordingly.
2. Timing of holiday – Don’t allow holidays at similar times. You’ll find that most tutors tend to ask for leave around the same time of the year e.g. Christmas, Easter, Summer holidays etc. Make sure you don’t allow ‘all’ of them to do that at the same time. If you did, you wouldn’t have a business.
3. Arrange for cover ASAP – We have a database of tutors; maintained through enquiries and job applications. You can always leverage that and reach out to them to see if they are available to teach. There is also an added stress of the security checks like DBS etc. I won’t pick this as my favourite option, as you don’t know the capabilities of these tutors coming in. So, I would personally avoid it. Nonetheless, it is an option. But your Managers might be able to step in and teach, so I would always go with that as my first choice.
4. Ask local tuition businesses for help – As a tuition business, it is good to keep connected with your local tuition centres, especially when you’re not in ‘direct competition’ with each other. For instance, they might be focusing on teaching 11+, whereas you might be focusing on GCSE Science. As long as there is no ‘direct competition’, they’ll be happy to recommend tutors. Reaching out to these local tuition businesses is an option – but not a must.
5. Find tutors online – You can always find someone online who is willing to come in as a one-off. Again, this is a risky approach as you don’t know anything about their work ethic, teaching style and most importantly their capabilities, which can impact the quality and reputation of your tuition business. Additionally, they tend to charge a lot of money for ad hoc services, so best to use this option as a last resort. 

Conclusion    

Tutors not turning up due to sickness and holidays presents a challenge, and there is no doubt about that. But can you do something about it? Yes, you can. 

I hope these mitigations and solutions are helpful, but sometimes we get lazy and don’t act upon them. These solutions are only going to save you hassle in future; because one thing’s for sure, and that is that tutors won’t stop getting ill and going away on holiday. 

After all, it is your business and you need to look after it.