Comment: Growth of private tuition tells story of mounting pressure Published on: 21 October 2015 Professor Liz Todd discusses for The Conversation the implications of the increased private tuition takeup. , Our recent found that 5% of seven-year-olds and 22% of 11-year-olds were receiving extra academic tuition outside of regular school hours. This suggests mounting to make sure their children 鈥減erform鈥�, to the performance pressures on schools to achieve good exam results. We analysed data from the , which is tracking 19,000 children born in 2000 through childhood (so far at age three, five, seven and 11) and plans to continue to adulthood. We looked at the children鈥檚 out of school activity, at how it changed during primary school and at patterns of activity for children from different backgrounds. The sample we looked at contained about 11,000 children from a white background and about 2,000 from an ethnic minority background 鈥� similar proportions to those in the wider population. Jump in private tuition Our findings on the extent of children having private tuition, presented at the British Education Research Association conference in September, seem to be quite a lot higher than previous estimates 鈥� although of course we are rarely comparing the same groups of children. A by education researcher Judith Ireson found that of 3,000 children aged 10-18, 27% had a private tutor. It was only when she got to children aged 11 to 16-years-old living in London that the figures became as high as 40%. What seems to about our figures is that at such a young age, seven years old, 5% of children are having tutoring of some kind. And substantial proportions of children at age 11 are having tutoring, either for English, maths or school entrance. This varied for different ethnic groups, but over 40% of children identifying as Indian, Black, and other (which includes Chinese) had some kind of tutoring. What we don鈥檛 yet have is data on how to interpret these figures. Over the past ten years we have seen the , through which parents face enormous pressure to use whatever resources available to 鈥� including tutoring 鈥� to make effective choices about their children鈥檚 schooling. Sometimes schools and parents to engage with each other. In this context, some parents give up and take their own action. This raises questions about the extent to which schools alone are responsible for their exam results 鈥� whether good or bad. But we do not know yet how effective private tuition is and how it might influence exam results. Tough choices Our research also found that extra tuition was most common among children whose mothers had a postgraduate degree 鈥� 30% 鈥� and least common among children whose mothers had no formal qualifications, though it was still relatively high at 19%. This suggests that parents with all types of educational backgrounds put an importance on education. Not everyone is so lucky. Monkey Business Images/www.shutterstock.com
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