Michael Gove made the announcement as part of the government’s review of funding for schools.

Headteachers will now have to decide whether to sign up for the one-to-one tuition programmes, using money allocated to them from the national schools budget.

Despite sustained difficulties in finding enough qualified tutors, the one-to-one tuition programmes have been widely accepted as very effective in raising standards in reading and numeracy, as I discussed a year ago. 40 hours of one-to-one reading assistance has been shown to help improve the reading age of children by almost two years, and after 20 hours of coaching the average gain in numeracy is more than a year.

One-to-one tuition works – yet some headteachers will be forced to withdraw their support for these programmes because of budgetary constraints.

And as the BBC reported today, for political reasons headteachers will not even have access to all the facts they need to make their decision, since ‘Every Child a Chance Trust – which runs the Every Child a Reader and Every Child Counts schemes for 60,000 primary school pupils – has been asked to delay the publication of research which could persuade head teachers of the effectiveness of their programme’.

See the BBC News article for more details.

There were interviews with two people who have detailed knowledge about this industry: Janette Wallis from The Good Schools Guide and James Turner, Policy Director at the Sutton Trust.

Below is a handy summary of what I think are some of the key points from their discussion. I hope you find it useful!

Why do parents hire a private tutor?

Janette mentioned there are two reasons why parents hire a tutor: firstly, a child who is struggling in a particular subject can improve their confidence and grades through tutoring. Secondly, there is the more negative aspect where tuition can be ‘contagious’, leading to the so-called tutoring ‘arms race’ among parents.

James agreed with the latter problem, noting there is more competitiveness and pressure than ever before. More children are getting top grades at GCSE and A-level, there’s a squeeze on university places and a squeeze on graduate careers. Parents naturally want to do the best for their child, and so will try to give them the edge.

Who hires private tutors?

James referenced a survey by The Sutton Trust which shows that a fifth of all children have had some form of private tuition over the course of their school careers, rising to more than 40% in London.

Parents of various financial means will make sacrifices to pay for a tutor, but there will still be many parents who can’t afford private tuition at all. As a charity, James mentioned how The Sutton Trust is concerned about those families from poorer backgrounds that miss out.

Janette talked about the type of parent who can’t afford £5000/term for private education, but who does have enough to pay £500/term for private tuition. In other words, these parents will go the state route but ‘top it up’ in certain subjects with a private tutor. She also stated that demand in some circumstances is driven by children themselves who are influenced by their classmates having tutors.

Does all this tutoring mean there is something fundamentally wrong with the state education system?

James noted that although private tuition is most popular in London, state school standards have actually risen faster in London than in other urban areas, so the amount of tuition isn’t necessarily correlated with the standards in state schools. He said how it’s more about an increasing consciousness of the issues and the competitiveness already talked about.

Tuition isn’t regulated in the UK: so how should parents choose a tutor safely?

Janette mentioned three key points in this regard. Firstly, parents should look for a tutor with a CRB check as a basic minimum. Secondly, some parents feel more comfortable if a tutor comes to their house because they feel that it’s a safer environment (although it’s a more expensive option). Finally, she recommended speaking to others who’ve used the tutor to help build up a picture of someone who’s trustworthy.

Does private tuition work?

James mentioned how research proves quite conclusively that private tuition provides the best way of boosting a child’s results. For that reason The Sutton Trust is currently piloting a tuition programme for children from poorer homes, not only to help those children but also to assess exactly effective one-to-one or small group tuition can be.

Janette mentioned there is research that shows how it’s the one-to-one nature of tutoring that works so well, and not necessarily whether a tutor is highly qualified or not. In that respect, parents often underestimate what they can do for their children themselves (on this point see Tutoring: A Tool for the Masses).

On tuition scare stories

A final word from Janette: Whenever I hear that ‘everyone in the class is getting a tutor’, you’ve got to be a little sceptical – it’s like ‘everyone in my class has an iPhone’ – I don’t think it’s always true.

A combination of pushy parents and increasing pressure to do well has forced more and more pupils to sign up for extra lessons – so many that some educationalists are now worried about the effects of that pressure.

The funny thing about the above quote is that I actually dug it out from an article published in 2001 – almost ten years ago.

One of the problems with this area is that there is very little independent research into private tutoring, and that with a dose of media hysteria statements such as the following from Mylene Curtis of Fleet Tutors (in the Times article) can end up turning into self-fulfilling prophecies:

There is a fear factor among parents … They are unsettled by constantly changing initiatives, lack of confidence in local schools, dropping standards and under-qualified teachers.

The fact is that Britain’s schools are not in crisis, no matter what the headline writers would have us believe. The recent Cambridge Review – the most comprehensive enquiry into English primary education for 40 years – found that primary teachers have never neglected the 3Rs and that primary schools may be “the one point of stability and positive values in a world where everything else is changing and uncertain”.

Journalists’ assumptions about what it is that tutors do also need to be challenged. Anne McElvoy’s claim in The Standard that parents are so worried that they will pay tutors for “stuffing yet more learning into their young” fundamentally misunderstands the psychology of tutoring. The research (see here) actually shows that, more than any other form of learning, tutoring stimulates independent thinking.

Moreover, because the power of tutoring lies mainly in the constructive contributions of the student themselves, the need for so-called expert tuition is diminished and tutoring needn’t be as socially iniquitous as many commentators like to make out. In other words, a novice tutor (or parent, sibling or friend) with a good grasp of the subject could instead achieve excellent results through very simple means.

Gordon Brown and Ed Balls are looking pretty cheery about the government’s one-to-one tuition programme – but will it work?

The programme is aimed at helping struggling children in England’s state schools. In July last year I reported on how the government is trying to recruit 100,000 one-to-one tutors for the purpose, and at the time, PriceWaterhouseCoopers brought to light the problems involved in recruiting such a large number of tutors.

Well, yesterday PriceWaterhouseCoopers published their final evaluation of the tuition pilot scheme, and the problems with tutor recruitment haven’t gone away. Only 37,000 tutors out of the proposed 100,000 have decided to sign up. They state,

The number of pupils receiving one-to-one tuition is still below the allocation of 10% of pupils per pilot local authority. Head teachers/school pilot leaders suggested this was partly a consequence of the ongoing challenges around recruitment.

Back in July, I discussed the recruitment issues with a Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) official who suggested that graduates with good degrees in maths or English (or strongly related subjects such as Media Studies) may be eligible to become tutors for the scheme in the future.

This sounds like a sensible idea: it would provide rewarding employment to graduates struggling to find work, and at the same time provide real support to pupils who are struggling at school. As my previous posts have emphasized, the most comprehensive research into tutoring demonstrates that the ‘active ingredient’ of tutoring is not the expert teaching skill of the tutor – it is rather the creation of a space for active pupil contributions which makes all the difference. Therefore, tutoring is something that intelligent graduates can certainly handle without requiring them to undertake conventional teacher training.

However, whether the government would ever consider this feasible or acceptable to the teaching profession or general public is another matter.

Tutoring: A Tool for the Masses

If I could give you a silver bullet to improve your child’s learning more dramatically than anything else, would you be interested? Would you be even more interested if I told you that it required no specialist skills?

Independent research out last week from Edge Hill University revealed that over 2,500 of the lowest achieving six-and-seven-year-olds in England achieved four times the normal rate of progress in maths after only a 20-hour educational intervention. The intervention itself is almost deceptively simple: one-to-one tuition.

Edge Hill’s positive findings not only lend support to the government’s £468m national one-to-one tuition programme for underperforming 7 to 16-year-olds, they also confirm the belief of many parents that paying for private tutoring is necessary in an educational arms race that shows no signs of slowing down. It is plain to parents that tuition has both emotional benefits (increased motivation and self-esteem) and demonstrable cognitive outcomes. It also makes sense intuitively that individual tailor-made learning will work, since this type of instruction can access what the educational psychologist David Ausubel termed ‘the most important single factor influencing learning’: that is, what the learner already knows. In Ausubel’s phrase, ‘Ascertain this and teach him accordingly.’

But wait. The actual mechanisms by which one-to-one tuition achieves its effects have only recently been explored, and the results are startling and counter-intuitive. Research undertaken by Micki Chi and her colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh refutes the traditional assumption that tutoring is effective because of the skills of the individual tutor per se. Neither a tutor’s adaptiveness to perceived needs nor their instructional ‘moves’ (such as scaffolding, explaining and providing feedback) actually seem to have much influence on the learning taking place. If Chi is right (and the evidence is compelling), it is rather the constructive contributions of the students themselves which are responsible for their progress. This is confirmed by the intriguing finding that pairs of students collaboratively observing a video of another student being tutored can produce the same learning outcomes as a real one-to-one tuition session.

This small but growing body of research into tuition should serve as a wake-up call to many. Firstly, the evidence shows us that it is probably the most effective medium for learning anything, and that it achieves its effects in extraordinary and unexpected ways. Secondly, tutoring is essentially a medium of instruction and not a political, social, moral or class issue. It is rather the ends for which it is used that have become controversial. For example, research demonstrates that tutoring is incredibly time-efficient. With this in mind, whether it is a million-pound government programme or a parent’s decision to hire a tutor rather than helping their child themselves, it should be possible to perform a cost-benefit analysis without class-ridden angst or references to sinister tutors robbing children of their free time. Finally, an understanding of the essence of the tutoring process should help policy-makers, teaching professionals and parents make sensible choices regarding its use. The research suggests that so-called expert tutors may well be superfluous; a novice tutor (or parent, sibling or friend) with a good grasp of the subject could instead achieve excellent results through very simple means.

Henry Fagg is the author of Tutoring: The Complete Guide, available for free download from www.thetutorpages.com.

At the end of last month, the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) announced it was going to recruit one-to-one tutors on a massive scale.

By October 2010, it is looking to recruit 100,000 tutors to provide extra one-on-one support for 600,000 pupils struggling in maths and English.

Tutors will be paid between £25 and £30 per hour for 10 lessons. It’s all part of a £138m government programme set out by Schools Secretary Ed Balls in the government’s latest White Paper, Your Child, Your Schools, Our Future.

Each Local Authoritywill be in charge of recruitment, and some may be offering training to would-be tutors. There has already been a useful booklet published for tutors interested in working in schools.

Currently, only tutors with Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) or with other teaching qualifications in the HE or FE sectors are eligible to apply (they can do so here).

However, I’ve spoken with a contact at the TDA who’s suggested that graduates with good degrees in maths or English (or strongly related subjects such as Media Studies) may also become eligible in the future.

This is presumably due to the tutor recruitment problems first outlined in the PriceWaterhouseCoopers interim report on the government’s tutoring pilot in December last year. The interim report mentioned that the DCSF was

“Undertaking research into the private tuition market to further understand the scope and scale of this market and the potential it has to fulfil future tuition requirements.”

The TDA is currently considering running some pilot studies with tutors who have degrees but no formal teacher training. If this is you, then watch this space for further updates!