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Does Tutoring Pupils For Grammar School Entry Really Give Them An Unfair Advantage?

It's not fair to blame private tutors for the shortcomings of selective education, argues Henry Fagg…

Henry Fagg
by Henry Fagg
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Private tuition has been in the news again – this time in relation to the government’s proposals to expand selective schooling across the country.

Concerns have been raised in the media and elsewhere that places at these new grammar schools would only go to children of parents able to afford the costs of private tuition. But is it right to blame this on the private tuition industry?

Last month the Sutton Trust published an in-depth report on private tuition in the UK, which included an analysis of private tuition and the 11+. It noted that among parents who put their children through grammar school admissions tests, over half do indeed pay for tutoring. Moreover, according to the latest 2016 Ipsos MORI poll, preparing for a school entrance exam accounts for around a fifth of all private tuition sessions nationally.

Given that the Sutton Trust’s remit is to promote social mobility, it is interesting to note that their report does not, in fact, criticise those who ‘buy’ their children an educational advantage through hiring a tutor. The report is instead critical of the wider context where, for example, wage inequality prevents parents on lower incomes being able to afford private tuition – since many of these parents say they would hire a tutor if they could.

On the moral question that private tuition poses, the report concludes that, ‘It is neither ‘unethical’ for those who can afford to pay for private tuition to receive it, nor ‘ethical’ for those who cannot afford it to go without. Policy options … should seek to limit the extent to which private tuition exacerbates educational inequalities between advantaged and disadvantaged, but preserve parents’ choice to employ private tutors if they wish.’

This conclusion makes sense in light of other policy recommendations put forward by the Sutton Trust, which include a government funded means-tested voucher scheme for private tuition, and the expansion of non-profit and government tuition programmes.

Releasing a child’s potential

The Sutton Trust’s view echoes what private tutors have been saying all along – that one-to-one tuition is, in essence, an effective way of releasing a child’s academic potential. No more, no less.

This recent article summarising the ‘8 Benefits of private tuition’ resulted in a number of tutors expressing their relief at finally reading an article focusing on tutoring’s merits – for example, how it gives customised support, fills in gaps in knowledge, develops confidence and encourages independent learning. This is in contrast to articles that stir up a fraught atmosphere around the industry.

Much to the bemusement of tutors, many of the industry’s detractors come from unlikely sources. For instance, prep school heads will sometimes use the unhelpful term ‘hothousing’, while they themselves are in the same business of coaching pupils for grammar or independent school entry. Indeed, figures show that prep schools send a disproportionately high number of pupils to local grammar schools.

The related criticism that tutoring results in a ‘narrower’ form of learning than school learning is also baseless. Yet it has spawned the policy of the ‘tutor-proof’ test, which thanks to a recent Freedom of Information request has recently put its creators in the embarrassing position of acknowledging there is no evidence that it works.

Desirable versus demonised

Along similar lines, there have also been reports of independent schools determined to change their admissions tactics to spot tutoring. As one tutor put it wryly, ‘Imagine the headline, ‘Independent schools change tactics to spot teaching’. Quite why one form of imparting education, i.e. education imparted by schools, is considered desirable, yet the other is demonised, is beyond me.’

The argument from schools determined to ‘weed out’ tutored candidates is that they are taking a more holistic approach – an irony not lost on tutors, who know that individualised attention is what allows this to flourish. The irony is compounded by the fact that young people studying at independent schools are actually twice as likely to receive private tuition than their state-school counterparts – meaning that these private institutions can by no means claim the full credit for their academic successes.

There is a serious point here. Private tutors tend to be thick-skinned regarding attacks on their profession because they witness the positive results of what they do on a daily basis. But attempts by the media and those with vested interests to suggest that private tuition is somehow ‘unethical’ can make parents and their children feel uncomfortable about what is a wonderful way to learn.

As the aforementioned Sutton Trust research goes to show, with greater government and charitable support, the benefits of one-to-one teaching can be made more accessible to families from all sorts of backgrounds.

As for Theresa May’s proposals for more selective schools, you will find private tutors on both sides of that particular political fence. However, the joy of private tuition is that those working in this industry will continue to help their students thrive in any context – whatever the policy initiatives of the day.

Henry Fagg is founder of The Tutor Pages; for more information, visit www.thetutorpages.com or follow @thetutorpages

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