Every TJ Tutors family begins with a Complimentary English Diagnostic Assessment. We assess your child’s current English performance, identify precisely where marks are being lost, and tell you what should be prioritised next.
Apply For A Complimentary English DiagnosticYour child works at home. We meet for thirty minutes. Findings in writing, whether or not your child joins us.
Your child reads well. Their teacher says they are doing fine. You have bought the papers, and they work through them most weekends.
And yet you could not say, with any real confidence, whether they are where they need to be.
That is not inattention. It is structural. A school report is written against national expectations, not against the entrance paper your child will actually sit. And no parent can mark their own child’s writing against a standard they have never seen applied.
So the honest answer to “how is she getting on in English?” is usually that nobody has measured it.
When a child is not making progress, the instinct is to add: another paper, another hour, another tutor. It is a reasonable instinct and it frequently makes no difference.
A child who has not been taught to explain a writer’s effect will not learn it by answering forty more questions that ask for it. They will simply get faster at answering them the same way. The practice is real; it is being spent on the wrong thing.
Intervention without diagnosis produces generic work, a term spent on skills that were already secure, and the same mistakes appearing in April that were there in September.
The first step is not more teaching. It is knowing precisely what to teach.
Every new TJ Tutors family starts here.
Before recommending a programme, we first establish where the child is now.
The Diagnostic Assessment allows us to:
Families receive clear findings from the assessment whether or not their child subsequently enrols with TJ Tutors.
There is no charge for the English Diagnostic Assessment.
Its purpose is straightforward: we assess first, then recommend the programme that the evidence supports.
Five questions, answered specifically, with evidence from your child’s own work.
Against the standard the paper actually sets, not against the class average.
Named precisely, so you know what is already secure and does not need paying for.
The specific move that is missing — not “comprehension” as a category.
Two or three things, in order. Not a list of eight.
One clear recommendation, based on what the work showed.
Assessments are conducted by a TJ-trained teacher, using the method TJ Tutors teaches to.
TJ Tutors was founded by Tom Harrop — MA Creative Writing, PGCE, Qualified Teacher Status since 2018, and a trainer of teachers. He wrote the method the school teaches.
VIPERS for comprehension, PETAL for analysis, AFORESTPIE for persuasive writing, SMAF for description. Children are taught the framework, not asked to infer it.
Every piece of work a child submits is marked by a TJ-trained teacher and returned within 48 hours, with one named next step. The marking is where the lesson continues.
At 11+, selective grammar and independent entrance — ISEB and GL formats, and the Stage One and Stage Two grammar papers — for schools including St Paul’s, Habs, City, Westminster, Wilson’s and QE Boys. At GCSE, AQA and Edexcel English Language and Literature.
Shared with each family’s permission.
A short application telling us about your child, the schools you are considering and what concerns you most. It takes a few minutes on a phone.
We send an English assessment matched to their stage. One sitting, nothing to revise, and no help — it is the only way we can see what your child can genuinely do on their own.
Marked by a TJ-trained teacher, the same way every piece of work is marked once a child is on a programme.
Thirty minutes, online. Strengths first, then what is limiting performance, then what should be prioritised. Whoever makes decisions in your household should be present, as a recommendation follows it.
A written findings summary, with one clear recommendation and the reasoning behind it. Yours to keep, and to use with your child’s school, whether or not you join us.
You do not need to decide.
New families begin with a Complimentary English Diagnostic Assessment.
We assess your child’s current English performance and look closely at what they can already do, where marks are being lost and which areas should be prioritised next.
We then make one clear recommendation based on the evidence in their work.
Recommended when a child needs focused specialist development in either comprehension or creative writing.
Recommended when a child needs complete English development across comprehension and writing.
Recommended when a child needs complete English development alongside additional specialist teaching, individual intervention and closer academic oversight.
Recommended when a student needs individual attention on their own set texts alongside the complete Mastery curriculum.
There is no catch and no charge. We do it this way because we will not recommend a programme for a child whose work we have not seen, and because a family deciding whether to spend several hundred pounds is entitled to know what they would be buying and why. If the assessment shows your child does not need a programme from us, we will tell you that, and you keep the findings either way.
Because we assess a small number of children a week and we want the time spent on children we can actually help. The application tells us your child’s year group, the schools you are considering and what concerns you, so the assessment is built around your child rather than run from a standard script. The assessment is sent as soon as the application is complete, and the calendar opens once your child’s work is back with us.
Our programmes are £449 to £1,495 for twelve weeks, and we publish that above rather than holding it back. The question is on the application so that neither of us spends an hour reaching a recommendation that was never going to be possible. It is a blunt question, deliberately, and answering “I would need to discuss it first” is a perfectly normal answer.
For the same reason a school asks for one at admission — it tells us what has already been noticed, so we are not spending the assessment establishing something a teacher recorded last term. We ask you to summarise it in a few sentences on the application, and to send the document itself afterwards if you have it. The assessment goes ahead either way.
We send an English assessment matched to their stage — comprehension and a piece of writing. Your child completes it at home in one sitting and you send it back to us. There is nothing to revise for, and please let them do it on their own: we can only help a child if we can see what they can currently do without help. We mark it before we speak to you.
A TJ-trained teacher, working to the method the school teaches. TJ Tutors was founded by Tom Harrop, who holds an MA in Creative Writing, a PGCE and Qualified Teacher Status, and who wrote the method and trains the teachers who deliver it.
Then we say so. It happens, and we would rather say it than take a family’s money for provision their child does not need. You would still receive the written findings and our view of what to prioritise at home or with the school.
For English, yes, and in one respect better: every piece of written work is submitted, marked and returned in writing, so you can see exactly what was said about your child’s work rather than hearing a summary at the door. Lessons are live and small-group, not recorded content.
No, and it is the point at which an assessment is most useful. Year 4 is when a gap can be corrected calmly rather than compressed into the year before the exam. Knowing where a child stands does not commit you to anything.
Often more so. An assessment from someone who is not currently teaching your child gives you an independent read on whether the work being done is the work that is needed. You are welcome to share the findings with your existing tutor.
The same things a school would ask before assessing a child, and for the same reasons.
It takes a few minutes and works on a phone. You can upload the school report if you have it to hand, but nothing depends on it at this stage.
Complete the application below. We will send your child’s assessment as soon as it is submitted.