We are very proud to announce that we are sponsoring the Love Tutoring festival taking place from Monday 28th June – Friday 2nd July. The incredible programme of free events (held virtually this year) includes keynote presentations, workshops, live podcasts and practical demonstrations spread out over a whole week focused around supporting and celebrating tutoring.

Here’s a quick Q&A with Ludo at Qualified Tutor to tell you everything you need to know about the Love Tutoring Festival.

1. Where did the idea for the Love Tutoring Festival come from?

 

The Love Tutoring Festival was borne out of a sense of duty to serve tutors. This year, our profession has been more relied upon than ever. Tutors have been brought into our schools with the National Tutoring Programme (NTP). Parents have turned to tutors to support remote learning. In many cases, students have also relied on tutors to support their mental health and wellbeing.

 

Here at Qualified Tutor, we decided that, amongst the flurry of other festivals (mostly music and arts) being organised for this summer, tutors weren’t going to miss out.

 

The Themes for each day fell into place very neatly. We begin with Special Educational Needs & Disabilities (SEND) & Mental Health on the Monday because this is central to the safety and support for both tutors and students in today’s tutoring industry.

 

The next day focuses on an area that many tutors feel they need greater support in: the business of tutoring. How to market, how to get more students, how to find and keep great clients and tutors, how to run that incredible tutoring business you’d always dreamt of.

 

Tutoring has at its core the foundations of teaching and learning. If we as tutors cannot master this area, then no amount of interactive learning games and outdoor sessions will be truly effective. And we’ve put on quite a line-up here …

 

No 5-day tutoring event this year would be complete without an exploration of the NTP, its main players and what the lessons have been.

 

And finally, we build towards a new global initiative to celebrate the work of tutors: World Tutors’ Day. On Friday 2nd July, the final day of the Festival, we will be hosting events that aim to honour the work that tutors do, both across the days of the Festival but also every single day.

 

2. How do you hope the Love Tutoring Festival will enrich tutors and their work?

 

Attendees will leave with a (renewed) sense of optimism about who tutors are, how they work and what they can achieve. As someone interested in tutoring (as I hope you are), there are clear benefits to this.

 

With hundreds of tutors coming together and sharing in the curious and supportive culture we embody at Qualified Tutor, imagine the positive energy that will be spread back to the hundreds, if not thousands, of students who work with Festival tutors every day, week, month and year.

 

With so many opportunities to meet tutors from around the world, we hope to inspire hundreds of global connections. Connected by the Internet but powered by a local feel, we are offering the unique opportunity to link up with tutors both next door to you and halfway across the world, in an explosion of tutoring partnerships.

 

But most of all, we hope to help you find greater enjoyment in your tutoring.

 

Whether through an enriched professional outlook, a larger and more profound network of fellow professionals or simply the confidence to take that next step, we hope that each attendee can leave the Festival admitting, openly or in secret, that they do, truly, Love Tutoring.

 

3. With so many events happening in such a short space of time, the festival is looking to be an impressive event. What was the most challenging part of bringing the Love Tutoring Festival to life?

 

I could take the easy route and say it was the marketing, promotion, social media, and scheduling of events – of course this took time, but I wouldn’t say it was the most challenging aspect.

 

The trickiest part of the Festival so far has actually been finding space for all of the wonderful speakers and guests we’d like to invite to the Festival. We want all of you to be speakers next time! That’s the culture we’re cultivating – if you’re not quite sure about this, come and see for yourself!

 

I’ll probably find that arranging 9 back-to-back events per day for a whole working week will be the most challenging part, but we haven’t got there yet, so how could I possibly say …

 

4. Do you have a particular session/talk you’re looking forward to?

 

Again, I feel there is an expected answer here … and yes, Johnny, I am looking forward to your keynote presentation on the Tuesday!

 

But my insider recommendation is actually the Entrepreneurs’ Roundtable at 7:15pm BST later that day (Tuesday 29th June). We’ve brought together three of the very best in business coaching, Mark Huxley of the Company of Entrepreneurs, Ash Phillips, Founder of Dffrnt, and Simon Fordham from the Association of Business Mentors. If you don’t learn something about tutoring business entrepreneurship from this event, I’ll eat my Zoom background hat.

 

5. Are there any plans for the Love Tutoring Festival in future years? How do you think future festivals might be different?

 

Of course, this is the first of many! We’re planning on running the Love Tutoring Festival every 6 months for the first 2 years and then once a year after that. It sounds strange talking about it now but we’ve already made some fairly concrete plans for the Winter Festival in December 2021, with themes around Music in Education, Exam Prep and more of a focus on Communities within Tutoring.

 

Certainly, something we’d like to make clear to attendees of this June’s event is that, if you have ideas for how future Festivals could be run or thoughts on what you’d like to hear from us and our speakers, we’re very open to hearing from you so please don’t hesitate to let us know.

 

As I mentioned above, we want attendees to become speakers – so don’t be shy and dive right on into this, the first Love Tutoring Festival!

 

Click here to find out more and join us at Love Tutoring Festival.