Education

Parents Turn To Private Tutors To Get Their Kids Through Exams


More than a quarter of students have private tutors, as parents look beyond schools to give their children an edge.

And parents are increasingly likely to hire tutors to help get their children through exams, rather than for general help with schoolwork.

Students who benefit from private tuition are more likely to come from affluent families, prompting calls to level the playing field by giving poorer families vouchers to pay for extra tuition for their children.

Tutors are often qualified teachers working outside school hours, and charge around £25 ($31) an hour, although rates can go as high as £40 ($50) an hour.

One in four (27%) of 11-16-year-olds in England and Wales have had private tuition, up from 18% in 2005, according to
research

released today.

The highest rates are in London, where two in five (41%) of students have benefited from extra tuition.

Tutors are increasingly being used to help students get through specific exams, rather than for more general support, according to the research.

When the survey was first carried out, in 2005, roughly similar proportions said they had received tutoring to help with a specific exam and to help with schoolwork in general (49% and 45% respectively).

But in this year’s survey, 51% said it was to help with a specific exam – either a public exam taken at 16 or an entrance exam – while just 35% said it was for general help.

Other reasons for getting private tuition were because they were interested in a particular subject (9%) or because their school did not offer that subject (4%), according to the survey of 2,809 11-16-year-olds.

Students who had received private tuition were disproportionately likely to come from well-off families: a third (34%) of students from “high affluence” families had private tutors at some point, compared with one in five (20%) of those from “low affluence” families.

While many schools insist that students do not need extra tuition, previous studies have shown that it can benefit students.

Research carried out by Education Endowment Foundation
found

that small group tutoring can boost maths results by three months over the course of a year.

To help level the playing field, the government should look at options for making tuition an option for low-income families, according to Sir Peter Lampl, founder and chairman of the Sutton Trust, the charity working to end educational disadvantage that carried out the research.

“With costs of at least £25 a session, many parents can’t afford it,” he said. “The government should look at introducing a means-tested voucher scheme to enable lower income families to provide tuition for their children.”

Almost a quarter of high school teachers (24%) have taken on private tuition in addition to their school responsibilities in the last two years, according to a separate survey for the charity.

Two thirds of these had arranged it directly with parents, as opposed to through an agency or a non-profit organization. Among primary teachers, 14% had provided private tuition, around three quarters organizing it directly with parents.



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