During the pandemic, Jasmine Thorn found herself struggling with the online instruction offered by her kids’ schools.
Thorn, like many parents, tried to be a teacher to her own kids — two girls, aged 6 and 10 — but found herself “locking horns,” especially with her youngest, Jocelyn. Jocelyn had joined other students on Zoom to learn elementary school-age subjects, like reading, writing, and basic math skills, but her mother found that the school-assigned online classrooms were unsuitable for both daughters.
In search of help, Thorn turned to Outschool, one of the most popular live online tutoring platforms in America. Thorn and her husband have since spent thousands of dollars on courses ranging from “Beginner French” to “Small Group Tutoring for Beginning Readers.”
The Outschool classes, she found, not only offered smaller and more engaging virtual classes but are also in nontraditional subjects that her girls could engage with.
“[Jocelyn was] kind of isolated and we kind of started doing an hourlong kindergarten class, the basics” on Outschool, she said. “But it was social and made her feel less isolated and she could make some friends.”
Thanks to parents like Thorn, the online tutoring market is booming. The industry as a whole was worth over $5.6 billion in 2020, according to one study by Grand View Research. In 2018, it was a $4.2 billion industry, a rise of 33 percent.