The (A*)Stars Behind Amar's Tuition

This article is kindly sponsored by Amar's Tuition.

It was April 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, and a then seventeen year-old Amar Singh Bhandal wanted to make the most of his time at home. Now a fourth-year at St Andrews, his tutoring company, Amar’s Tuition, has helped over 110 students in the five years since its genesis.

It began when Bhandal observed that the pandemic presented a refined need for tutors: “It became clear that a lot of students were falling behind, and so the [...] number of parents who were keen to get some kind of support for their kids went up, as well.”

At the time, he had no prior tutoring experience. I wondered if that presented any challenges, but he explained that he just applied many of his own tried-and-true study techniques. “It was very much me building on my experience of having sat exams myself and [...] pass[ing] that [knowledge] on to the students,” he said. 

In fact, it is precisely the fact that the company’s tutors are university students that Bhandal says is the company’s “[most] unique selling point.” “[The tutors are] all a similar age, or not much older than the students,” Bhandal explained, “which means that they have recent experience of doing the exams.” 

Claire Muller, a third-year student who began working at Amar’s Tuition in June, said the same: “I mostly just [...] put myself in their shoes.” “My first student was [...] an eighteen year-old A-level student, so she was only [...] three years younger than me,” Muller recalled, “so I just sort of thought, like, three years ago [...] what’s [...] one thing I would have really wanted to get out of being [...] one-on-one with somebody.” 

As its name would suggest, Amar’s Tuition began with Bhandal alone. “I hadn't even [...] fathomed the idea of having several tutors working alongside me,” he said. But with each student’s success, he received more referrals and consequently more clients: “The next question was, well, you helped us to fix English, can we now fix maths?” 

Being more humanities-focused himself, Bhandal sought (and still seeks) tutors skilled in other subjects. Should you tutor for Amar’s Tuition (interested readers are encouraged to scan the accompanying QR code for the application form), they would reap the benefits of a £20-£25 hourly rate as well as professional work experience. While Amar’s Tuition is student-run, it is a registered corporate member of the National Tutors Association, making the experience a CV embellishment. 

Working for Amar’s Tuition also presents the opportunity to obtain a professional reference — an invaluable asset when seeking post-graduate employment. “You know, everyone can get a lecturer to write one,” Bhandal told me, “but it's difficult to get a professional letter of recommendation.” 

Students are assigned a teacher depending on the tutor’s expertise and their own preferences. As Bhandal explained, the most important thing at Amar’s Tuition is that “everyone’s happy.” He takes student feedback into consideration before implementing a tutor into a student’s study regime. 

This emphasis on individual student satisfaction sets Amar’s Tuition apart from other tutoring companies, especially as it pertains to different examination boards. “Other tutoring services, if they're trying to [...] offer subjects to lots of different students — especially with hundreds of students — [...] aren't able to differentiate in the same way,” Bhandal explained. 

While the company’s tutors focus on the mastery of the British GCSEs and A-level curriculum, Bhandal explained that a good tutor just has to be “someone who's willing to put in the time to figure out the specification and plan the lesson.” 

“We have several tutors from Northern Ireland and Scotland who didn't do English GCSE [...] and yet they spend, you know, a couple of hours figuring out the ins and outs of the exam board and [...] [adapting] their approach,” Bhandal explained.  

Amar’s Tuition has managed to tackle even the most outlandish of scholastic scenarios. One student who, while training to be a chef in a Swiss hotel, attended German lessons. Another student from last year ended up receiving 100 per cent across all of their English GCSE papers. “It was a pretty big achievement,” Bhandal remembered. 

While Amar’s Tuition began as a way for Bhandal to make some extra money, it’s obvious that he cares about each student’s success — something especially evidenced in the company’s pro-bono initiative. Amar’s Tuition offers free lessons to those in need of financial assistance, struggling with health or family issues, and resit students. 

Bhandal explained that the latter can face low confidence levels — something which Amar’s Tuition aims to change.“In those last couple of weeks before their exam [...] we try and offer [students] extra lessons just to really boost their confidence,” said Bhandal.

Muller mentioned this, as well, noting that the more specific a tutor’s feedback, the more receptive the student. “Probably about a half an hour of me marking their [work] is [...] me just being like, ‘Oh, you did so well there,’” she said. She told me that the best part of tutoring is seeing that a student has actually applied the advice she’s given. 

According to Bhandal, this makes all the difference. He told me that one resit student — who would usually aim to just pass their examination — ended up getting a grade five. “They kind of exceeded and then exceeded again,” he recalled, “which is pretty rare for a resit student.” 

Additionally, as a part of their most recent initiative, Amar’s Tuition offers pro-bono tutoring for students who have received conditional offers from St Andrews. And should they meet their conditions, they will receive £30 gift cards to both the University shop and Topping & Company, as well as an offer to tutor at the company.

Having St Andrews students on board, Bhandal explained, allows for an invaluable tutoring experience: “Everyone who's a student at a decent university like St Andrews obviously did pretty well in their A-levels, and so developed these strategies [...] which we can then pass on to the students.” 

Bhandal explained that, while running Amar’s Tuition in his fourth-year is demanding, the end result of seeing a student’s success makes it all worthwhile. “Results Day is always a great day because we have loads of messages coming in saying, now I've got my A*, I've got into university, which is always brilliant,” he said.

These success stories often, in Bhandal’s experience, lead to even more, as Amar’s Tuition has helped multiple children from the same family. “The impact we have on [...] families is one where they don't forget about us once the exams finish,” he said. Amar’s Tuition makes it clear to students that, even after meeting their end goals, they can always ask for additional help. Some students even return for essay and examination assistance once they reach university. 

A quick Google search of Amar’s Tuition will provide all of the customer satisfaction evidence you need: listed beneath the company are twelve exclusively five-star reviews. Some are written by the students’ parents, and some are written by the students themselves. 

“I can't thank Amar enough for his outstanding teaching in English,” one former student wrote. “He did me a tremendous favor by helping me achieve a grade 9 in English literature. When I started in year 10, I was far from this level, but Amar's guidance and expertise made all the difference.” 

Tutoring isn’t just about teaching your student, Bhandal told me: “It’s about making sure that it’s a good experience for you, too — that the student [wants] to be there, is prepared, and so on.”

Image: Amar Singh Bhandal