What does a tutor do that software cannot?
- Notices the pause before the answer, the wrong-but-interesting reasoning, the guess that happened to land. None of that is in the answer data.
- Changes approach mid-explanation when a child’s face says the first one did not land.
- Provides accountability. For some children this is the entire value, and no amount of animation replaces it.
- Handles a genuine learning difficulty, where the right response is specialised and individual.
What does software do that a tutor cannot?
- Happens every day. A tutor is once or twice a week at $40–$80 an hour; frequency is what builds recall, and frequency is the thing money buys least efficiently.
- Holds every answer. Six months of attempts across 26 skills is a record no person can keep in their head, and it is what makes a slow slip visible before it becomes a gap.
- Targets difficulty consistently, question by question, without a child having to admit anything is hard.
- Costs the same for a second child, when it is priced per family.
So which should I choose?
If you know what the problem is and it is specific, software is usually enough and much cheaper. If you do not know whether there is a problem, software that reports per skill answers that question for far less than an assessment. If there is a diagnosed difficulty, or your child will not work without an adult present, hire a person — and consider doing both, with the daily practice feeding the tutor information about what to work on.