(Estimated reading time: 8 minutes)
Dear Learnable Tutors,
As you know, COVID-19 has become a global pandemic. As Singapore grapples with this unprecedented crisis, the private tuition and enrichment sector has been adversely affected as well.
Home-based tuition not yet affected by tightened social distancing rules (as of 29 March 2020)
On 24 March 2020, the Ministry of Health announced that all centre-based and enrichment classes will be suspended to reduce the risk of intermingling of students from different schools. Many tutors and parents have reached out to ask whether home-based tutoring is affected by these tightening measures. As of 29 March 2020, home-based tutoring has not yet been restricted.
Preparing for further tightening measures
As the situation is rapidly evolving, tutors must prepare for a potential situation in which social distancing rules are further tightened, and home-based tutoring is no longer a possibility.
Home-based tutors should consider undertaking the following practices to keep themselves and their students safe:
- Regular health monitoring.
- Tutors should regularly monitor their own health and let their students’ parents know if they are having symptoms of fever, coughing, sneezing, breathlessness, or runny nose. If you have any of the above symptoms, you should not physically be meeting with your students.
- Tutors should also encourage their students to let them know if they’re having the above symptoms before lessons, so that alternative arrangements can be made if their students are ill.
- Tutors should regularly monitor their own health and let their students’ parents know if they are having symptoms of fever, coughing, sneezing, breathlessness, or runny nose. If you have any of the above symptoms, you should not physically be meeting with your students.
- Discuss the possibility of remote learning with your students’ parents.
- Educating our students remains a priority even during this pandemic, and we should find innovative ways to continue our lessons with them. Video conferencing is one such way. Tutors can consider using video conferencing software such as Zoom (http://zoom.us/) to continue lessons with their students even in the event that they are required to stay at home. Zoom includes features such as video calling, screen sharing, and whiteboarding, which serves as a virtual intermediate working space to take notes and draw diagrams.
- Some parents may be reluctant to have their children having lessons via video conferencing, understandably preferring to have lessons in person. Thus, we would advise tutors to have an in-person walkthrough with the parent and student on how each element of their lesson can be communicated through video conferencing at the end of the lesson session. During the walkthrough, tutors are advised to do a simple 5 minute demo testing to make sure both computer environments are able to host the lesson online effectively. A brief tutorial on how to use Zoom is appended in our blog post (linked).
- Educating our students remains a priority even during this pandemic, and we should find innovative ways to continue our lessons with them. Video conferencing is one such way. Tutors can consider using video conferencing software such as Zoom (http://zoom.us/) to continue lessons with their students even in the event that they are required to stay at home. Zoom includes features such as video calling, screen sharing, and whiteboarding, which serves as a virtual intermediate working space to take notes and draw diagrams.
Learnable will be monitoring the situation closely, and will update our tutors whenever there are developments that impact them.
Available support for tutors
Budget 2020 comprises many support schemes that tutors can take up during this downturn. We have listed some below for your reference:
- Self-Employed Person Training Support Scheme.
- Self-employed persons attending courses under the SkillsFuture Series can receive a training allowance of $7.50 per hour between now and 30th April, and $10 per hour from 1 May onwards. This is a way for tutors to upgrade their skills across various domains (e.g. Digital Media, Cybersecurity, Entrepreneurship, etc.), and earn a generous training allowance while they are on course. Further, most courses can be entirely paid for out of your SkillsFuture Credits!
- Instructions on how to apply for the Training Allowance can be found here.
- Self-employed persons attending courses under the SkillsFuture Series can receive a training allowance of $7.50 per hour between now and 30th April, and $10 per hour from 1 May onwards. This is a way for tutors to upgrade their skills across various domains (e.g. Digital Media, Cybersecurity, Entrepreneurship, etc.), and earn a generous training allowance while they are on course. Further, most courses can be entirely paid for out of your SkillsFuture Credits!
- Self-Employed Person Income Relief Scheme
- Under this scheme, eligible self-employed persons will receive $1,000 per month for nine months.
- Read more about whether you qualify for relief, and how to prepare your application here.
- Under this scheme, eligible self-employed persons will receive $1,000 per month for nine months.
Learnable is here for all our tutors. We are always but an email (help@learnable.asia) or a WhatsApp text (+65 6974 2819) away, and we will do our best to assist and support our tutors through this storm.
Together, we will get through this.
Thank you,
Shaun Zhang
Co-Founder, Learnable
