Parents and private tutors: how to communicate well

The relationship works less well when each person expects something that has never been put into words. The parent sometimes thinks the tutor will flag any difficulty immediately. The tutor assumes the student will pass the information on. The student, for their part, may feel that every mistake will be reported to their parents.

After six years of private tutoring, I therefore find it useful to treat communication as part of the support itself: present enough to avoid grey areas, but light enough not to turn the session into a permanent three-way relationship.

1. Define roles from the start

The first conversation should not only be about setting the time and the rate. It is also a chance to define who is involved in what.

Person	Main role	To avoid
Student	Work, ask questions, flag difficulties and gradually become more independent	Waiting for the parent and tutor to organise everything for them
Tutor	Diagnose, teach, adapt the sessions and give a clear next step	Promising a result or doing the student’s work for them
Parent	Provide useful information, follow the overall progress and make working conditions easier	Checking every exercise or directing the content of every session

Where the line falls naturally depends on age. A student in Sixième (the first year of collège) will often need a more present parent for times, documents or organisation. An independent lycée student, on the other hand, can deal directly with their tutor, with more widely spaced check-ins with the parents.

Before the first session, it is useful to agree on a few rules:

• who deals with the tutor day to day;
• which channel to use for important information;
• which difficulties should be reported to the parent;
• how often to take stock more broadly;
• how much independence to leave the student for homework and organisation.

Our checklist for the first tutoring session helps you prepare this initial conversation without turning it into an endless questionnaire.

The relationship between a parent and a private tutor is obviously not the same as the one between a family and a school. The principles published by the ministère de l’Éducation nationale (the French Ministry of Education) in its 2026 Charte Parents-École (Parents-School Charter) nevertheless provide an interesting reference point: mutual respect, dialogue, trust and shared responsibility. These principles remain relevant in one-to-one support.

2. Share useful information without overloading the tutor

A tutor needs context, not all the information available about the child’s schooling.

Before a session, the following are generally useful:

• a recent test, if it reveals the difficulty being worked on;
• the chapter currently being studied;
• an exercise that is genuinely blocking the student;
• an important deadline;
• a change that might alter the goal of the support.

Conversely, sending ten tests, several months of school reports and the entire exercise book “just in case” can complicate preparation rather than improve it. Information becomes useful when it answers a precise teaching question, such as a fall in the average that reveals a persistent difficulty.

Describe the facts rather than making a diagnosis

Compare:

“He makes no effort in Maths.”

and:

“For the past two weeks, he has left several exercises unstarted and says he doesn’t know which method to choose.”

The second wording gives the tutor something to test. The problem may come from a prerequisite, a misunderstanding of the instructions, a fragile method or another mechanism. The tutor will be able to observe it while the student works.

The same goes for “she lacks confidence”, “he isn’t motivated” or “she doesn’t listen”. These phrasings may reflect a genuine feeling, but they say little about what happens in schoolwork. Focus on observable behaviour.

3. How often should you check in with the tutor?

There is no ideal frequency for every family. The aim is to get enough information to steer the support without creating a second meeting after every session.

For regular follow-up, a simple arrangement often works well:

• after each session: a short record of what was worked on and the next step;
• when a problem arises: a specific conversation rather than waiting for the next overall review;
• after several sessions: a broader check-in if a decision needs to be made about the goals, frequency or method.

The pace also depends on the situation. Support started urgently before an exam may require more frequent contact. For an independent student followed for several months, a detailed debrief every week may become unnecessary.

Research on parental engagement mainly concerns the relationship between school and family, not private tutoring. It nevertheless offers a useful nuance. The Education Endowment Foundation stresses that communication with families works better when it is personalised, linked to learning, positive and planned with its frequency and usefulness in mind. It also points out that too many messages can become counter-productive.

Systematic follow-up should not become a permanent dialogue

The tutor does not need to send each parent a separate message recounting the sixty minutes of the session. The record can be structured: goal, progress made, difficulty, work and next priority.

On NOEO, this approach takes the form of the session report produced after each session. The parent can find the useful elements of the follow-up in their Parent space without having to ask the tutor every time “how did it go?”. The NOEO journey before, during and after the session shows how this visibility fits into the support.

4. What questions should you ask after a session?

“Did it go well?” often produces an answer that is hard to use: “yes”. To understand how the support is evolving, questions should focus on observable elements.

Here are better questions:

• What was the goal of the session?
• What can my child now do more easily?
• Which difficulty remains the priority?
• Is it a problem of understanding, method or practice?
• What should they do before the next session?
• What will you start the next session with?

There is obviously no need to ask all six questions after every hour. They mainly serve as a checklist when the follow-up seems vague.

Ask for a next action

The most useful question is often: “What should they do now?”

“Fractions are still fragile” informs the parent. “Redo exercises 4 and 5 without the correction and check finding the common denominator first” allows the student to act.

The Education Endowment Foundation’s guide to working with parents, designed for schools, stresses in particular the value of giving families practical information that allows them to support learning. In private tutoring, the same principle leads to preferring a concrete instruction over a general assessment.

5. How to talk about results and motivation?

Communication becomes more delicate when marks are not improving or the student is doing little work. Two mistakes are then common: looking for someone to blame, or drawing too broad a conclusion from a single result.

A mark is a signal, not a complete diagnosis

After a mark of 8/20, first ask what the paper reveals:

• was the knowledge available?
• were the exercises understood?
• does the same mistake come up several times?
• was the test finished?
• were the methods worked on in tutoring reused?

A rise in the average can be encouraging, but a private tutor cannot guarantee a number of points gained. In the short term, progress can also show in other ways: the student starts exercises alone, asks more questions, finds a method again without a hint or spots certain mistakes when checking their work.

Avoid labels about motivation

“He’s lazy” or “she isn’t motivated” quickly close down the diagnosis. A student may avoid an exercise because they don’t know how to start, because failure has become very frequent or simply because they have not understood what is expected.

If the question is whether the support genuinely addresses an identified difficulty, our article on the signs that may justify private tutoring helps distinguish a one-off need, a persistent difficulty and a simple isolated drop in marks.

6. Handling a disagreement about the method or frequency of sessions

A parent may legitimately feel that there are too few exercises, that progress seems slow or that another method would be better. The tutor, for their part, may consider that adding hours will not solve the main problem.

Disagreement becomes constructive when you go back to the goal and the observations.

Instead of:

“You should do more exercises with him.”

try:

“In the last two tests, he is still losing a lot of points on calculation. Do you think more regular practice of these automatic skills would be useful?”

The tutor can then confirm, qualify or explain why the priority lies elsewhere.

Before increasing the frequency, define the problem to solve

Moving from one to two sessions a week only makes sense if you know what the extra session is supposed to achieve. If the student simply needs to practise between sessions, a second hour with the tutor can sometimes needlessly replace independent work.

Conversely, when several prerequisites need to be rebuilt quickly or a deadline is approaching, a temporarily more intensive pace can make sense.

The criterion must remain educational: after a few weeks, is the student more able to do alone what previously required help?

Know when to change tutor if the relationship is not working

Not every disagreement has to be resolved at all costs. If the goals remain unclear, if the explanations do not suit the student or if communication remains difficult despite a clear conversation, changing tutor may be reasonable.

Our guide on choosing a private tutor details the criteria to reassess in this situation. NOEO also lets you browse and contact several tutors free of charge before booking a session.

7. Preserve the student’s independence

The paradox of parental follow-up is simple: a parent may want to help so precisely that they end up becoming the go-between for every decision.

At collège (lower secondary school), close support can be useful. But gradually, the student should be able to:

• explain for themselves what they don’t understand;
• send or prepare their own documents;
• know what work needs to be done;
• ask the tutor their questions directly;
• take a growing part in organising the follow-up.

The ministry also points out, in its resources for families, that parental support changes as children grow up and become more independent. The school context is not the same as one-to-one support, but the principle matters: following does not mean doing things in the student’s place.

Should the parent attend the session?

As a general rule, a parent does not need to attend the whole session. Their presence can be useful for a few minutes at the start of a first session with a young student, to pass on important information, or for a check-in agreed with the tutor.

Staying for the whole hour, on the other hand, can change the way the student asks questions, makes mistakes or interacts with the tutor. Part of private tutoring rests precisely on being able to try, hesitate and get things wrong without every difficulty immediately becoming a family matter.

On NOEO, the Parent space is designed around this principle of useful visibility + student independence. The parent can follow the relevant elements of the support without automatically taking part in NOEO Live. After each session, the session report keeps a record of the work done, areas for improvement and the work to prepare.

A simple grid to check that communication is working

Question	Good sign	Signal to review
Are the goals clear?	Parent, student and tutor know what the priority is	Each session deals only with the day’s emergency
Does the parent know what was worked on?	A short record is available	They have to ask for a full debrief after each session
Is the student becoming more independent?	They ask more of their own questions and prepare their work	The parent still organises every interaction
Are disagreements discussed?	They are brought back to facts and a goal	Everyone defends their own method without checking the results
Does the follow-up lead to action?	A next priority can be identified	Exchanges stay at the level of “good session” or “needs to work”