A student gets 90 minutes with you a week, and 8,910 waking minutes without you. Whatever happens in those 8,910 decides whether the 90 worked.
For most centres, what happens is a photocopied sheet. It goes home in a bag on Tuesday, gets opened on Thursday, stalls at question 4, and comes back the following Tuesday half done, if it comes back. Then it sits in a pile until Sunday night, when the owner marks it, and the student hears about question 4 a fortnight after they got stuck on it.
That's not a homework problem. It's a six-days problem, and it has four parts: what's expected, what happens when they're stuck, when it gets marked, and what you know on Monday. This guide takes them in order, and ends with how the six days turn into the thing a parent re-enrols on.
- Paper homework comes back half done because nothing happens at the stuck moment and nothing happens when it isn't done.
- Write the homework policy down: how much, by when, what to do when stuck, what happens if not done. One page, no shaming.
- The 9pm moment is the whole six days. An explanation from your own page, or a closed book.
- Marking at the moment of finishing is a different thing from marking on Sunday night, for the student and for you.
- Monday's view of who did it and what the class got wrong is why Tuesday's lesson is better. It's also the parent report.
Why paper homework comes back half done
Trace one sheet.
Tuesday, 5:30pm. The set goes into a bag. Thursday, 8:45pm. The bag comes out, because there's a maths test at school on Friday and the sheet is the only revision to hand. Questions 1 to 3 go fine. Question 4 uses a method from three weeks ago that the student has half forgotten. There's nobody to ask. The book closes.
The following Tuesday, the sheet comes back with three questions done. Or it doesn't come back, because it's still in the bag, and the student says they did it. Either way, you don't know what happened at question 4, and you won't until you mark it, which is Sunday.
Sunday, 10pm. Twelve sets, some half done. You mark them. Question 4 was wrong for eight of the twelve, which would have been useful to know before Tuesday's lesson, which has already happened. You write "see me" on eight sheets. Next Tuesday you'll go over it, two weeks after the class first saw it.
Every step in that chain is reasonable. The chain is the problem. Nothing happens at the stuck moment, nothing happens when it isn't done, and the marking arrives too late to change the next lesson. Fix those three and the same sheet comes back.
The homework policy, written down
Most centres set homework every week and have never written down what they expect. So the student guesses, the parent guesses differently, and when a set isn't done nobody's sure whether that was a big deal.
Write it on one page and send it with the enrolment pack. It needs five things.
| Element | What to write | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Why | Your child gets 90 minutes a week with us and six days without us. What happens in the six days decides whether the 90 minutes worked. | The parent needs the reason before the rule |
| How much | One practice set a week. Thirty to forty-five minutes, spread over two or three sittings. | A number a parent can hold a child to, and a child can plan around |
| By when | Before the next session, or by Sunday night if you'd rather it's marked first. | A due date is a due date. "Before next week" isn't one |
| When stuck | We'd rather they stop and ask than guess. Here's how. | The stuck moment is where sets die. Tell them what to do at it |
| If not done | One missed set, a note. Two in a row, we'll call you. Not to tell anyone off. To find out what's in the way. | Follow-up without shaming. The call is expected, not a surprise |
The homework policy template is this as a one-page layout with your logo at the top and a sign-and-return slip at the bottom. Re-send it at the start of every term, because families forget and new tutors invent their own version if there isn't one written down.
The "when stuck" line is the one most centres leave blank, because on paper there's no honest answer. That's the next section.
The stuck-at-9pm moment
Everything about the six days turns on what happens when a student hits the question they can't do.
Now, on paper: they close the book. Or they search for the topic and find a method you don't teach, learn it, and spend a term unlearning it. Or a parent tries to help, from memory of how they were taught, and the two of them argue. Or they copy the answer from a friend's sheet. What they don't do is ask you, because you're not there until Tuesday.
An explanation from your own page, instead of a closed book
With the platform, the set is on their phone, and next to the question they're stuck on is one tap for help. The first response is a hint about the method, drawn from your notes. If that's not enough, the second is a worked example from your material with different numbers. If they still need it, the third is the full solution, in your method, in the order you teach it. Every explanation says which document and page it came from.
Add 3/4 and 2/5. Give your answer in simplest form.
You can't add fifths to quarters directly. Find a denominator both share: 20. So 3/4 becomes 15/20 and 2/5 becomes 8/20. 15/20 + 8/20 = 23/20, which is 1 3/20.
It can't answer from the open internet, can't invent a method you don't teach, and can't be talked into doing the homework. If your material doesn't cover something, it says so and suggests asking on Tuesday. And you can see, for every student and every question, how many hints they needed, which is often more useful than whether they got it right. The stuck at 9pm page shows the three stages.
The difference for the student is that question 4 gets done at 9:07pm on Thursday instead of being the reason the sheet stalled. The difference for you is that you know it was question 4 before Tuesday.
Marking the moment it's finished, not Sunday night
The second thing paper can't do is mark itself.
On the platform, multiple choice, short answer, numeric and fill-in-the-gap questions are marked against your key the moment the student submits. Equivalent forms are recognised, so 1 3/20 and 23/20 both score where your key allows it, and you can require simplest form where it doesn't. Units are checked where your key specifies them.
Working out still happens on paper, exactly as now. The answer goes in on the phone and gets marked; extended writing is typed or photographed, your choice. Nothing about how a student thinks through a problem changes. What changes is what happens the second they've finished.
A wrong answer gets a worked solution straight away, not a red cross and a fortnight of silence. A right answer gets the solution too, so the student who guessed learns the method and the student who knew it moves on. Extended responses and essays go to the tutor with a suggested mark against your criteria, and the tutor's call is final. Any mark can be overridden, with a note the student sees. The instant marking page has the detail.
For the student, the feedback loop shrinks from a fortnight to a few seconds, at the moment they still remember what they were thinking. For you, Sunday night comes back. Put your own numbers into the marking hours calculator: students, sets per week, minutes per set. Multiply it out and see what the pile costs at the rate you charge for teaching.
Monday morning: who did it, who didn't, what they got wrong
The third thing paper can't do is tell you anything before you've marked all of it.
Monday, 9am, before anyone walks in. The tutor dashboard shows the class as a grid of students against topics, coloured by how they went: strong, ok, weak, not attempted. One glance shows the topic eight of twelve missed and the two students who never opened the set. Click a cell to see a student's actual answers and how many hints they used. Click a topic to see the questions the class got wrong most, with your worksheet beside them.
That's Tuesday's lesson, planned on Monday from what the class actually did rather than what you assumed they'd do. It's also two phone calls, made in week 3 instead of week 9.
Tuesday's lesson is better for one reason: it starts where the class is. You walk in knowing question 4 was the problem and that it was the method from three weeks ago, not the new topic. Twenty minutes on that, then forward. Without the Monday view you'd have found out on Sunday, after Tuesday, or not at all. The tutor dashboard page shows the class view and the owner view across every tutor.
The other thing Monday shows is who's gone quiet. Two weeks with no completed work is the earliest warning of a family drifting, and it's listed without anyone compiling it.
It's also the view that makes a new tutor useful. A casual who's never met the class can read the same grid and walk in knowing what to teach, which is most of what the casual tutors guide is about.
How the six days become the parent report
Everything above produces a record: what was assigned, what was done, what was right, what needed a hint. That record is the fortnightly parent report, and it's the reason the six days matter to the business and not just the teaching.
Every second Friday, each parent gets one page with your logo, from your address. Sets completed out of sets assigned. Questions attempted and time on task. Accuracy by topic, before and after, so an improvement is visible rather than claimed. A two-sentence summary that names the skill and the class where it was taught. What's next. Signed by the tutor. You can review each one and edit the summary in your own words, or let them go.
If a student did nothing that fortnight, the report says so, gently, and names what's due. It's the follow-up line of the homework policy, delivered without a phone call.
By Term 4 a parent has seen roughly twenty of them. That's a different re-enrolment conversation from the one where they've seen invoices, and the Term 4 retention playbook is built on it. If four families re-enrol who otherwise wouldn't have, that pays for the platform. The parent reports page shows one.
What you can do on paper this term
None of this needs a platform to start. It needs the policy and a rhythm.
Write the policy this week and send it. Set one set, not three. Pick a marking day that's before the next lesson, not after it, even if that means Monday morning at the kitchen table rather than Sunday night. Keep a tally on Monday: who did it, who didn't, which question most of them got wrong. Write one line to each parent every second Friday from that tally.
It's hours, every week, and most of it is the kind of work a platform built from your own material does on its own. But the rhythm is the thing, and the rhythm is yours to start.
This week
Write the homework policy on one page using the template and send it to every family. Fill in the "when stuck" line honestly, even if the honest answer is "ask on Tuesday" for now. Then, next Monday, count who brought the set back and which question stalled them. That number is what the six days are currently worth.