What is remedial teaching? How it differs from tuition, and how to tell it is working

Remedial teaching goes back to the point where a skill broke down and rebuilds it in order. For a child who struggles to read, that may mean hearing and separating the sounds in spoken words, linking sounds to letters, blending sounds into words, reading those words accurately and then fluently, and finally reading for meaning. For a child who struggles with number, it may mean going back to quantity, place value and the meaning of the operations with objects the child can handle, before returning to written sums.

Specialists describe good remedial teaching with a handful of words, and each one is something you can check for in a lesson.

• Explicit: each new idea is taught directly and shown, not left for the child to work out.
• Systematic: skills follow a planned sequence from simple to complex.
• Cumulative: each lesson reviews what came before, and a step is secure before the next is added.
• Diagnostic: the teacher watches every error and adjusts the next lesson to it.
• Active and multisensory: the child sees, hears, says, writes and sometimes moves, so that learning is not only by listening.
• Measured: progress is checked regularly against a starting point and shown to the child.

Many families already pay for tuition when a learning difficulty is noticed, and it is natural to ask for more of it. For a child with a learning disability, more tuition usually means more of what has not worked, delivered faster, before an exam. The table sets out why the two are different jobs.

Many children need both at different times, and a good remedial teacher will help the family decide when tuition would help and when it would simply fill the afternoon.

It is most often arranged for children with a specific learning disability: dyslexia, affecting reading and spelling; dysgraphia, affecting handwriting and written expression; and dyscalculia, affecting number. It also helps children with ADHD whose reading or maths has fallen behind, children who have missed foundations through illness or a change of school or country, and children who have been called slow learners without anyone finding out why.

An assessment by a qualified psychologist or a hospital team is what identifies a learning disability and describes its shape, and a good remedial teacher works from that report. Teaching can begin while the family waits for an assessment, but the plan becomes much sharper once one exists. Getting a learning disability assessment in India explains who does it and what to bring, and the slow learner label explains why that phrase should start questions rather than end them.

Whatever the method, a good programme has the same bones. Ask to see each of these in the first month.

• A starting point measured in the first sessions, so that progress can be shown later.
• Three to five written targets, drawn from the assessment and the school's plan.
• Short, regular sessions, rather than one long session a week.
• A clear structure to every lesson: review, one new step, practice, and a quick check.
• Materials matched to the child's reading level, not the class textbook.
• Little homework, and only practice the child can do successfully alone.
• Progress shown to the child in a form they understand.
• A monthly note to the family and, with consent, to the school.

If a remedial teacher cannot tell you where your child started, what the targets are or how they will know the targets have been met, the teaching is not yet remedial, however kind and patient the teacher is.

Most specialist remedial teachers for reading and spelling work within what is called structured literacy: explicit, systematic teaching of the sounds of the language, how they map to letters, syllables, word parts and sentence structure. Approaches descended from Orton-Gillingham are among the best known, and many commercial and school programmes follow a similar pattern. For number, teachers often move from concrete objects to pictures to written symbols, so that a child understands a sum before being asked to do it on paper.

You do not need to judge between methods. You need a teacher who can name the method they use, say who trained them in it, and explain why it suits your child. Structured literacy and multisensory teaching describes what a good reading lesson looks like minute by minute.

There is no honest single answer. A child with a mild difficulty caught early may need a few terms; a child with a significant learning disability discovered in class seven may need support for years, changing in focus as they grow. What should not vary is that progress is measured and reviewed, at least every term, and the plan changes when the measures stop moving.

Signs that it is working: your child reads or calculates more accurately and a little more fluently on the teacher's own measures; they start using a strategy in schoolwork without being reminded; they are less anxious about the subject; the class teacher notices. Signs that it is not: the same worksheets week after week, no measurement, a child who dreads the session, and reports that say only that the child is trying hard.

Remedial teaching happens in three places, and many children use more than one. Some schools have a special educator who runs resource-room sessions, and it is worth asking how long those sessions are and what they cover. At home, a remedial teacher can see the pencil grip and the paper, which matters for handwriting, and can keep a young or restless child engaged. Online, a family can reach a teacher trained in a specific method who does not live in their city, which suits older children who can work to a screen.

Home or online remedial tutoring compares the two in detail. Whichever you choose, the teacher should be in touch with the school, so that the strategies used in the remedial session are allowed and encouraged in class and in tests.

Four questions separate a specialist from a general tutor with good intentions.

1. Which structured method were you trained in, and who trained you?
2. How do you measure a child's starting point and progress, and how often?
3. How will you work with my child's school and with the psychologist's report?
4. What do you do when a child hits a wall in a session?

Specialists answer all four immediately and specifically. Special Minds introduces remedial tutors at home in Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune and Ahmedabad, and online anywhere in India, and verifies each tutor's training and speaks to their references before a family sees the file.