More parents are relying on tutors to teach the basic skills students once learned in the classroom
As children return to school this year, a record number will also see a tutor. Standardized tests illustrate how public schools are eroding.
Standardized tests of Canadian students illustrate the problem. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has seen Canadian math scores fall from 532 in 2003 to 497 in 2022. That 35-point drop is serious, as even a 20-point decline is considered equivalent to a year of learning. PISA, run every three years by the OECD, has long been a benchmark showing Canada among the world’s top achievers, which makes the recent declines more troubling.
Canadian students scored 534 in reading in 2000, but just 507 in 2022, a drop of 27 points. Canadians scored 534 in science in 2006, only to drop 19 points to 515 by 2022. Together, these trends point to a public education system that is no longer giving many students the foundational skills they need.
More parents are looking for tutors for help. Grandview Research expects the market for private tutors to have a compound annual growth rate of 6.8 per cent and become a $12.1-billion industry by 2030. Online tutoring is expected to grow even faster at 15.3 per cent CAGR and reach $3.1 billion by 2030. Industry analysts link this growth to parents seeking extra academic support as class sizes rise and learning gaps widen.
I interviewed Saradia Raha, director of education at Sylvan Learning Center in Abbotsford, British Columbia, to better understand the challenges and how her school is responding.
“Many teachers are facing large class sizes, stagnant wages, increasing demand without the matching of resources,” Raha says, adding that the public system often fails at offering special education and help for neurodivergent students.
The loss of instructional time during the pandemic set many children back. Children are less likely to read physical books than in the past, and many struggle to maintain focus.
“Kids would totally lose focus if information wasn’t presented to them within a certain time slot,” Raha says.
Raha says one “striking” commonality of students who come to Sylvan is their difficulty reading or writing at grade level.
“So many students right now, they do have this significant hurdle in phonics, foundational reading,” she says. “We target core phonics concepts. First, short and long vowel sounds, definitely consonant blends.”
Common mathematics instruction now uses a discovery learning approach. In this method, students explore concepts, patterns and relationships through problem-solving, experimentation and inquiry, rather than receiving direct instruction or formulas from the teacher.
“If they’re expected to figure out concepts without clear guidance and without teaching core methods and point-to-point practice, they will develop misconceptions and miss key steps,” Raha adds. “Numbers, place values, basic operations, they’re often underdeveloped, and it impacts their problem-solving skills and higher-level reasoning.”
Students who arrive at Sylvan have their educational level assessed and a plan put in place. Personalized attention and experimentation with different approaches reveal what works for each child.
“Maybe just a reward system, or maybe it’s just a little bit of motivation, or maybe it’s just repetition, constant repetition, which is not possible in school settings or classroom settings,” Raha says. “We do a mix of visual learning and paper-based worksheets, anything that tells us what their learning style is.”
Sylvan uses tokens to reward students for extra effort. These tokens may be anything from crafts to gift cards for donut shops or video games or movie theatres. Raha says students often tell their parents “how much they love the environment.”
Raha says a great majority of students achieve their goals within four to six months, though some take as long as a year.
“We’ve seen kids who’ve come with absolutely very low self-confidence or ability to decipher things. But when they leave Sylvan, it’s almost a different student, and they have the right tools, so they take that to school and apply that.”
Raha estimates 30 per cent of Sylvan students are neurodivergent and says many spend years in frustration before their challenges are recognized. She emphasizes that early identification is inconsistent across provinces, leaving many children undiagnosed until learning gaps widen.
Raha suggests that Canadian education policy should mandate early screening for learning differences such as dyslexia, dyscalculia and ADHD in the first years of school, with guaranteed follow-up support. It’s a worthy suggestion for educators who want no child to be left behind.
These insights serve as a reminder: with the right support, every child can succeed. Unfortunately, they also highlight how public education is falling short. Something is wrong, perhaps a great many things, when students are faltering and need tutors more than ever.
Lee Harding is a research fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
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