How Long Should Your Tutoring Sessions Be?
Originally Published on March 22, 2018
Updated on June 10, 2025
Effective tutors tailor instruction to the needs of their students. At the first session with every new client, a number of key decisions must be made based on pre-assessment data and goals for the student's academic growth. Part of that initial discussion must include how long tutoring sessions should last and how often they should occur.
While some test-prep companies opt to standardize the process, the duration of sessions, and their curriculum as much as possible, the best tutors find ways to tailor the test-prep experience to the client’s individual needs. Deciding on the ideal session length for a student is one aspect of tutoring personalization that tutors and test-prep professionals cannot afford to overlook.
Finding the Sweet Spot
Depending on whom you are asking, “optimal” tutoring sessions can run anywhere from 30 to 120 minutes (or beyond).
Realistically, if a session is too short, the logistics of handling materials and establishing focus could cut into a significant percentage of instructional time. If a session is too long, there is a reasonable risk of losing students’ focus down the stretch.
Tutors must consider the fact that students with learning differences, like ADHD, often do better with shorter sessions that match their attention spans. On the other hand, students who qualify for instructional modifications, like extended time, may benefit from longer sessions taught at a slower pace.
Time of day matters, too. If a student is attending sessions immediately after a full day of school, there is likely only so much fuel left in the mental tank; weekends or evenings might be better candidates for longer sessions, since the student has had time to decompress and arrive more energized.
No matter which session length you agree on, remember that certain elements of a strong test-prep program will inevitably require longer blocks of time.
For instance, full-length practice tests are just that—full length. Students should have exposure to what test day will actually feel like before sitting for the SAT® or ACT®. Obviously, that doesn’t mean that every session needs to be the same duration as the test. That said, the first time a student sits for a full-length testing session shouldn’t be on test day.
Zeroing in on the timing “sweet spot” requires careful thought about each student’s needs. The best test-prep professionals weigh all the variables and involve the relevant stakeholders—students, parents, and teachers—in the decision-making process.
Research-Based Guidelines for Session Length and Frequency
Recent large‐scale studies and practitioner reports emphasize that shorter, more frequent sessions tend to produce better learning outcomes than fewer, longer sessions.
For example, the National Education Association (NEA) has found high‐impact tutoring programs work best when individual sessions run about 30 minutes and occur 2–3 times per week, rather than one lengthy meeting each week.
Likewise, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in the U.K. reviewed dozens of small-group and one-to-one tutoring interventions and concluded that teaching blocks of 30–60 minutes, delivered 3–5 times per week over a sustained period (roughly 8–12 weeks), consistently yield the greatest gains—both academically and in terms of retention—especially when those sessions align closely with classroom content.
In practice, that often translates to scheduling three 30- to 45-minute sessions weekly when the student is already most focused (for instance, late afternoon or early evening on non-school days). Even when full-length practice tests or diagnostic reviews require an hour or more, breaking the bulk of “teaching time” into these shorter, regular meetings helps avoid attention fatigue and maximizes sustained engagement.
Quality Over Quantity
Whatever timing conclusions you arrive at, optimizing how you use the allotted tutoring time will have a big impact on student growth. Time used well always trumps more time spent.
Consider how much time you spend in a session on non-instructional tasks or tasks students could be self-assessing:
Are you grading student work by hand during the lesson?
Are you spending tutoring time checking homework?
Is the majority of your session spent working through practice problems that the student completed between sessions?
Are your progress reports and parent updates taking place during tutoring time?
If any of these tasks are eating into your instructional minutes, consider moving them outside of one-on-one sessions so you can keep the student’s focus squarely on learning.
Balancing Total Tutoring Hours with Session Efficiency
While total time on task matters (e.g., ACT research shows that using ACT Online Prep for 7+ hours relates to larger score gains), how you distribute that time is equally critical.
Rather than two 90-minute sessions, consider three 60-minute meetings per week—or even four to five 30-minute meetings if schedules allow—so that each block remains within a student’s natural attention span. This approach not only reduces cognitive overload but also provides more frequent check-ins, which can reinforce learning and catch misconceptions earlier.
In other words, it’s better to have 30–45 minutes of laser-focused instruction three times per week than to cram that same content into one long, four-hour marathon. Frequent, short sessions give students time between meetings to self-assign practice and return with specific questions, ensuring that every minute of the next session builds on what they tried at home.
Switching to a comprehensive, custom-branded test-prep curriculum like the one offered by Clear Choice Prep can remedy many of the major culprits of wasted tutoring time. The combination of digital accountability tools, self-assessing practice, instant student feedback with video examples, and automatically generated progress reports can take many of the administrative tasks off a tutor’s plate, freeing up more time for meaningful teaching and learning.
An optimized and personalized tutoring experience is not only effective, but it's marketable as well. Being able to assure clients that the time they are paying for is actually instructional time can be a vital part of your pitch when courting clients exploring their local tutoring options.
Click the link below to schedule a demo and see how our customizable, white-label test-prep curriculum can help empower your tutors to maximize both their teaching time and student growth!