Why I Believe Tutors Matter More than Ever

Education matters to me more than almost anything else. If you zoom out far enough, and then keep zooming, the future of every individual, every society, and arguably humanity itself depends on it.

We survive by learning. We adapt by understanding. We move forward by knowing more tomorrow than we did yesterday.

For me, education sits right at the bottom of everything, like bedrock. It matters as much as breathing.

That belief hasn’t softened with time. If anything, it’s grown sharper.

We live in an odd moment in history. We have more access to information than any generation before us. Any child with an internet connection can, in theory, learn almost anything. And yet, paradoxically, it has never felt harder to genuinely educate ourselves.

Information today is everywhere, but it’s also messy. Unqualified. Unfiltered. Shaped by algorithms and incentives we can’t see. It’s often inaccurate, sometimes deliberately misleading, and almost always delivered without context.

Making sense of it all is hard enough for adults. For children, it’s overwhelming.

That’s why educators matter more now than ever. Not just as people who pass on facts, but as guides. As steady hands helping young minds learn how to think, how to question, how to weigh ideas rather than just absorb them. In a world full of noise, educators provide signal. They give context, balance, and perspective at a time when those things are increasingly rare.

For me, education is also inseparable from happiness. I’ve always loved learning. I wish I could know everything. The more I learn, the more I realise how much I don’t know, and instead of being discouraging, that fills me with wonder. Wonder turns into awe. Awe turns into curiosity. Curiosity keeps me engaged with the world. It’s a loop I never want to break.

Only through education do our minds really open. It’s hard to articulate just how much my tutors shaped me. Martial arts tutors connected me to my body, my health, discipline, compassion, control, respect, and community. Music tutors helped me understand my emotions and how to express them, and then led me into the science of sound itself — why certain vibrations, in certain combinations, can make us feel deeply human things. Science teachers opened my mind to how the natural world actually works, which quietly reshaped how I understand almost everything else.

Each thing fed into the next. Everything I learned made me a little better at understanding the world, my place in it, and other people. It made me calmer. More curious. More empathetic. Happier. This might sound grand, but I genuinely believe that when this happens at scale, it nudges humanity in a better direction.

More recently, I saw this play out in a very small, very personal way. My daughter worked with a speech therapist — a language tutor of sorts — who helped her learn how to make certain sounds correctly. Before that, she was deeply self-conscious. It held her back in ways that were hard to see unless you were close to it. After a relatively short period of patient, skilled, one-to-one support, she changed. She became more confident, more expressive, more herself. It genuinely changed her life.

People who do that kind of work have my utmost respect. They don’t just teach skills. They unlock confidence, identity, and self-belief. They quietly alter the trajectory of a child’s life, often without ever being fully aware of the impact they’ve had.

I wouldn’t be the person I am today without tutors who were willing to invest their time, energy, and care in my growth. I’m profoundly grateful for every teacher and tutor who did that for me. And yet, as things stand today, I think many tutors get a raw deal.

Tutoring is hard work. It’s emotionally demanding. Every pupil requires a tailored approach and a real human connection. It isn’t, and can’t be, an educational conveyor belt. Despite that, tutors often face income instability, late or missed payments, heavy admin, safeguarding responsibility without proper infrastructure, and burnout that comes from caring too much for too long. For work that is so personal and impactful, it is often underpaid and under-supported.

That worries me, especially now. I think tutors are as important today as they have ever been. In many cases, they’re quietly absorbing the pressure created by crowded classrooms, overstretched schools, anxious parents, and children who need individual attention to thrive. If we allow tutors to burn out or be pushed into other careers, we lose something that can’t easily be replaced.

A good tutor is more than an educator. In many ways, they’re like a good parent — patient, attentive, firm when needed, compassionate always. And honestly, we could all do with a little more of that in the world.

Tutonomi exists because of all of this. Not because tutors need another piece of software. Not because admin is annoying or payments are inefficient, even though those things are true. It exists because the people doing some of the most important educational work in our society deserve to be supported, protected, and allowed to focus on what they do best: teaching, guiding, and caring.

If education really does underpin everything, then the people delivering it — especially at the most human, one-to-one level — matter profoundly. This is simply my attempt, in a small way, to act on that belief.