Realising the Positive – What the media doesn’t tell you about private tuition
Is private tuition simply a way for some families to buy themselves an unfair academic advantage, or have its practitioners and users been unjustly maligned? Henry Fagg, founder of The Tutor Pages, makes the case for the defence… When private tuition comes in for criticism within the media, the trigger is often the 11-plus exam. […]
- by Henry Fagg
Is private tuition simply a way for some families to buy themselves an unfair academic advantage, or have its practitioners and users been unjustly maligned? Henry Fagg, founder of The Tutor Pages, makes the case for the defence…
When private tuition comes in for criticism within the media, the trigger is often the 11-plus exam. The head of the Independent Association of Prep Schools, for example, referred to private tuition in The Guardian last month as, ‘An industry preying on parents’ fears.” He went on to comment that, “Parents spend a lot of money hothousing a child to get them through selective examinations. The child then gets into that highly demanding school and is miserable because they have been pushed to a point which will mean that secondary school is not a happy experience.”
At the same time, prep schools themselves will often boast of their successes in coaching pupils for those very same tests. The sophisticated coaching provided by prep schools makes it much more likely that their pupils will pass – yet we don’t hear concerns from prep school headteachers that these children may have been set up to fail later on in their school careers.
Either preparation for the 11-plus is justifiable, or it is not. In this context, it seems fair that parents, whatever their background, should be able to boost their child’s chances through tuition if they wish to.
A red herring As far as private tuition across the country is concerned, however, this debate surrounding the 11-plus is something of a red herring.
Only 5% of children in the UK attend grammar schools, yet in 2015 a quarter of children reported having received private tuition in their lifetime, rising to 44% in London. Tutoring is sometimes criticized for having a narrow focus on exams, but when surveyed, only half of children said that the main reason they were seeing a tutor was to prepare for a particular exam. The other half of the story – that parents and their children instinctively value many other aspects of private tuition – often goes unreported.
Tutors will be hired for a multitude of reasons – to help a child who has missed school due to illness, for example; to support a child who has special educational needs, or to supplement a child’s homeschooling.
Increased access Quality private tutoring can help a child express themselves as an individual, leading to greater self-confidence. Private tutors are able to broaden a child’s horizons, encourage self-reliance, act as a role model, instil a love of learning and more besides.
In essence, tutoring is a medium of instruction which works. This is why charities such as Action Tutoring are partnering with schools and training volunteers to tutor disadvantaged young people in schools. It is also why the education and social mobility think-tank The Sutton Trust is calling on the government to introduce a means-tested voucher system as part of the pupil premium, so that lower income families can afford tutoring.
Private tutoring is here to stay – though of course, it never really went away. It is just that more people are now recognising its benefits. With more affordable options than ever before – ranging from online tuition and private tuition centres, to the aforementioned use of the pupil premium – tutoring is becoming ever more accessible to a greater section of society.
Further details regarding The Tutor Pages can be found at www.thetutorpages.com and by following @thetutorpages
