A timetable a tired child can actually keep is worth more than an ambitious one that collapses in November.
Updated 25 October 2026 · Great Home Tutor · Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon
Two sessions a week at a fixed time, with a proper gap after school, beat four sessions squeezed wherever there is space. Decide the slot before you decide the number of hours. The evening a child is least tired is worth more than an extra session in the one they are most tired in.
| Applies to | Classes 6 to 12, CBSE, ICSE and ISC |
|---|---|
| Where | Home tuition across Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon, plus online anywhere |
| Usual pattern | Two fixed sessions a week per subject, same days each week |
| Enquiries | +91 92121 42427 |
The slot matters as much as the number of hours
Straight after school is the worst common choice. A child who has been sitting since morning, has not eaten properly and has not moved is not going to absorb a new method for solving anything, whatever the tutor does. An hour later, after food and a short break, the same child is a different student.
Late night is the other trap, and it is worse than it looks because it is invisible. A session that ends at half past nine leaves homework undone, pushes sleep back, and takes its cost out of the next school day rather than out of the session itself. The marks fall and nobody connects it to the timetable.
In Delhi, evening slots are also the ones most affected by traffic, so a tutor travelling across the city to a seven o'clock slot will sometimes arrive at quarter past seven. If the slot cannot absorb that, choose a different one rather than being annoyed twice a week for a year.
Spread or stack
- Senior classes, one subject. Ninety minutes once or twice a week usually works better than repeated short sessions. A physics numerical or an accountancy question takes twenty minutes before anything is learnt from it.
- Junior classes. The opposite. Forty-five minutes is plenty, and three short sessions beat two long ones. Attention, not syllabus, is the binding constraint.
- Two subjects on the same evening. Possible for Classes 11 and 12 with a real break between, but the second subject is always the weaker session. Give the harder subject the first slot, not the leftover one.
- Back-to-back with a school test the next morning. Avoid it. The session becomes a revision class by default and the planned work is lost.
Ahead of the school, or behind it
This is the decision parents never consciously make, and it changes what the tuition is for. A tutor running a week behind the school teaches revision: the child hears everything twice and consolidates. A tutor a few days ahead teaches preview: the child walks into the school class already knowing the shape of it, which helps a shy student enormously and bores a confident one.
Either is defensible. Drifting between them is not, because a tutor who follows whatever chapter the child mentions that evening never finishes anything. Ask in the first month which of the two is being done and why.
The thing most parents get wrong here. They add a session instead of protecting the one they have. Work set in a session needs somewhere in the week to be done. If there is no such slot, the next session is spent redoing what was set, and you have paid for the same hour twice. Put the homework in the timetable before you put in a fourth session.
What happens to the timetable in exam month
Every year the timetable is quietly rewritten for about three weeks, and almost nobody agrees in advance what the rewrite looks like. The school stops teaching new material, the child wants more sessions, and the tutor is suddenly being asked for evenings they may have already given to someone else.
Settle it in the first month instead. Ask the tutor two things: how many extra sessions they can make available in the fortnight before school exams, and what the session turns into during that period. The honest answer to the second is that it should stop being teaching and become papers, timed, marked and discussed. A tutor still introducing new topics five days before the exam has misread the calendar.
When it genuinely does not fit
School, coaching, a sport and three tuitions do not fit into a week, and pretending otherwise produces a child who is present everywhere and learning nowhere. If something has to go, cut a whole subject rather than halving all of them. Two subjects taught properly and one left to school is a real plan. Three subjects at half strength is not.
The same applies to online. Online sessions are easier to schedule and that is precisely their risk: they get moved, because moving them is easy. A fixed online slot that never moves is worth more than a flexible one that drifts across the week.
Questions parents ask
Can we do everything at the weekend?
For one subject with a strong student, yes. For a child who is behind, no. Weekend-only means six days between contact with the subject, which is exactly the gap in which a shaky method is forgotten.
How long should a session be for Class 8?
Forty-five minutes to an hour, twice a week, is a sensible default. Ninety minutes at that age is usually sixty minutes of work and thirty of politeness.
My child also attends coaching. How do we avoid duplication?
Give them different jobs. Let the coaching run its own course and use the home sessions for the specific gaps the coaching does not stop for, plus the school's own syllabus and paper pattern. Ask the tutor to work from the school's chapter, not the coaching sheet.
Can the slot change every week depending on school activities?
Try hard to avoid it. A fixed slot is half of what makes tuition work, because it is the only part of the week the child can plan around. Keep one moveable session if you must, not both.
Should we cancel tuition on the day of a school test?
Usually keep it, but tell the tutor in advance so the session becomes a proper review of the paper rather than a rushed new chapter. That review is often the most useful session of the month.
Is a daily session better than twice a week?
Rarely, and only for a short catch-up stretch with a clear end date. Daily sessions leave no time for independent work, and independent work is where the learning actually settles.
Need a slot that works around school?
One-to-one at home in Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon, or live online anywhere. Tell us the days and we will tell you honestly what fits.
Call / WhatsApp +91 92121 42427