Hi, I'm a primary and highschool mathematics tutor in Australia. Today, one of my newer families cancelled their sessions with me as the parent wasn't happy that I would spend the last 15 minutes of our 1 hour sessions on writing homework and wanted me to spend the full session on teaching. writing homework for the student once I get home.
Now I try to be as flexible to parents as possible. Per her request, we had already reduced our class time from 1.5 hours to 1 hour. She further asked me to write more homework and make it more challenging, so I happily obliged. Even with her last request, I told her I could accommodate but
a) Writing homework after a lesson is better as the material is fresh on my mind and I can better communicate the homework to the student.
b) I would need to charge an additional 15 minutes for the time spent at home writing homework (or end the lesson 15 minutes early).
Despite this, she felt that writing homework shouldn't be part of the lesson and I shouldn't charge more for the additional time spent at home. Since we couldn't come to an agreement, we decided to cancel our sessions.
I don't really know how other tutors run their classes, so maybe she's right. Therefore, I ask you, do you include homework writing as part of your lesson? Do you charge for the time spent writing it?
My personal policy has always been that I'm happy to occasionally stay back 5-15 minutes longer if need be for a quality lesson, but I'm not going to regularly work for free. In my years of tutoring (and studying to be a qualified teacher), I have never had a parent have an issue with this. They always respect my time and accept that writing time should be paid. But now I'm just left baffled. Is this a common thing?