This article originally appeared in The Good Web Guide.

Have you heard about the private tutoring ‘arms race’? Is ‘everyone’ now employing a private tutor for their child? And does it worry you that as a parent you’re not doing enough for your child’s education?

Every parent naturally wants to do the best for their child, but scare stories about the private tuition ‘epidemic’ cause unnecessary anxiety among parents. Not every child needs a private tutor. And parents who employ a tutor should enter the process with open eyes.

No Longer for the Privileged Few

First of all, tuition is primarily an effective medium of instruction, and not a subject for dinner-party angst. Its benefits are no longer only for the privileged few, as demonstrated by the government decision to employ thousands of one-to-one tutors in schools. A study by Edge Hill University revealed that over 2,500 low 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.

Research also shows that one-to-one tuition achieves its effects in an unexpected way. Evidence collated by the University of Pittsburgh refutes the traditional assumption that employing an expensive tutor is necessary. That’s because, rather than the tutor’s instructional methods being paramount, it is the constructive contributions of students themselves which are responsible for their progress. This is important for parents because it suggests that a novice tutor (or parent, sibling or friend) with a good grasp of the subject can also achieve excellent results.

Hiring a Tutor

For a parent interested in hiring a tutor, several other factors need to be taken into account. Most obviously, what is the best way to find a tutor safely? Word of mouth is perhaps the easiest solution, since you can listen to the recommendations of those whom you trust. Using a tuition agency will also work for some. Although there is an advantage in the personal matching service offered by an agency, in harsh economic times this may come at too high a price for many.

Finally, an online service such as thetutorpages.com can be a good option. Parents contact tutors for free, and so costs are low. As a result, it is then up to the parent to follow up a tutor’s references themselves. Tutors on this site not only write extensively about their background, but submit at least one article on their expertise, thus helping parents decide who to hire.

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.

Find it on The Tutor Pages website under our Media Room, or at the following link:

http://www.thetutorpages.com/media-room/june-2010-child-protection-interim-statement.pdf

We urge all parents, tutors and anyone else involved in private tuition to read it. We hope that our perspective will be informative and that it will encourage debate on the topic (soon we’ll also have a forum on The Tutor Pages so you can voice your comments too).

Child protection is a complex area, and the more you look at it, the more you realise that what is perceived as helpful may not actually be so.

The statement should help clarify the issues for those parents and tutors who are no doubt concerned or confused about this whole area.

Finally, we’ve no idea yet what the new government is going to do about the VBS scheme, so much of this information may change.

Watch this space!

It also mentions an academic research project we’re in the intial stages of colloborating with on this subject.

Any feedback v welcome!

Henry

Although the survey results don’t appear to be up yet on their website, eGov monitor covered the story yesterday.

In line with the rules of the VBS, 88% of those questioned thought that vetting should take place where the activity is weekly or more. However, 66% supported vetting where the activity is monthly or more, 66% wanted schools to check authors and other similar visitors to schools, and 61% said that parents involved in school exchanges should also register with the VBS.

Ironically, these are the very areas of the VBS which were scaled back last December amid a storm of protests from parents, teachers and volunteers that the government had gone too far. At the time, the seven main representative organisations for school and college leaders wrote a letter to Ed Balls saying that the newly introduced system was “disproportionate to risk”. The result was a government climbdown involving a reduction in the number of adults who would have to register from around 11 million to 9 million.

It is hard to know what to make of the new Fairplay For Children survey. Jan Cosgrove, its National Secretary, is one of the few outspoken supporters of increasing the scope of the VBS. Sitting firmly on the other side of the fence are campaigners such as Josie Appleton and the Manifesto Club. Personally, I’m impressed by the views of Mark Easton, BBC News’ home editor, who has described the VBS as “a child of moral panic” and “a textbook case of how media hype, political expediency and bureaucratic process lead to conclusions that can later appear disproportionate”.

Last month, we published our own survey which suggested that there was widespread opposition to the VBS among private tutors, for whom signing up is voluntary.

We’re now doing some research into the risk of child abuse within the private tuition context. We’ll be asking questions such as How big is the risk? Is there any evidence that a voluntary system for tutors will actually reduce the risk of abuse, or is it just something good for the tutor’s CV? Could the VBS actually increase the risk of child abuse? John Adams (expert in risk compensation, Emeritus Professor of Geography at University College London and Honorary Member of the Institute of Risk Management) recently raised this spectre in his blog:

Leaving aside the mind-boggling expense and bureaucracy required to perform this feat [introduction of the VBS], its effect is almost certain to be perverse. A CRB check will be seen as an insurance policy; behaviour that might previously have aroused suspicion is now less likely to be questioned because some superior authority has certified the suspect as “safe”.

John Adams states on his website that he is “intrigued by the persistence of attitudes to risks” and laments “disputes about issues for which conclusive evidence is lacking”. Quite. We’re hoping to get some more evidence together on the subject of risk in private tuition, for the benefit of parents, tutors and other interested parties. Watch this space!

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.

Controversially, it seems that the power of one-to-one tutoring lies less in the instructional ‘moves’ of an expert tutor, and more in the constructive contributions of the student themselves. In other words, tutoring works because it provides a framework for students to actively construct knowledge by themselves.

Last Saturday, the Guardian Money section ran a feature on home schooling. In contrast to the social, philosophical and ethical points raised by most respondents, Mairead Patton instead drew readers’ attention to the pedagogical benefits of home learning – and pointed us in the direction of recent research which echoes the research into one-to-one tutoring. The research in question was published last year in Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison’s book How Children Learn at Home. In Mairead’s words,

The authors discovered that home-schooled children absorbed information mainly by “doing nothing, observing, having conversations, exploring, and through self-directed learning”. They liken the “chaotic nature” of informal learning to the process that leads to scientific breakthroughs, the early stages of crafting a novel, coming up with a solution to a technical problem, or the act of composing music.

Thomas and Pattison’s work is accurately researched. It is particularly strong on the way home schooled children are self-directed in their learning, and how they can acquire literacy and numeracy effectively. In the publisher’s description, the book provides “not only an insight into the powerful and effective nature of informal learning but also presents some fundamental challenges to many of the assumptions underpinning educational theory”.

This book, together with Micki Chi’s research into how tutoring works, challenge the orthodox understanding of the learning process. In the words of one reviewer,

The children concerned learn almost by accident through their everyday experiences, when they feel like it and are ready for it. Some of them receive input from their parents, while others learn with complete autonomy.

The families and the authors describe how the majority of the children observed are actively engaged in their own learning and, therefore, establish their own learning agendas guided by what suits them best. The removal of competition, restrictive curricula and the time-wasting built into the school day create the space for children to develop their self-motivation and thereby enable them to learn more efficiently.

As a retired teacher with thirty years experience, I find that this book provides me with evidence of the value of home schooling and throws out a powerful challenge to the skeptics.

In March, the UK Government Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) published its own guide for tutors who are going to be working one-to-one with children in the state sector in England.

It’s all part of the new DCSF intiative called Making Good Progress which aims to offer one-to-one tuition to children who are falling behind in English and Maths. The target is ambitious: to have one-to-one tuition available to 300 000 state sector pupils a year in both of these subjects. (There is currently a serious shortfall in the number of tutors recruited for this scheme, and there is even a possibility of recruiting tutors from the private tuition sector.)

Having recently completed our own guide to private tutoring, I’ve read the government guidance for tutors with interest.

Aside from our own guide, I think it contains the clearest advice on the nuts and bolts of tutoring I’ve yet seen, and the strategies it details could easily be applied in the wider world of private tuition.

Of particular note are:

• a list of principles and teaching strategies for tutors (headings: enquiring into prior knowledge - drawing pupils into a modelled process - prompting pupils to share their thinking - what to say when a child is stuck - praise - how to draw attention to weaknesses and errors)
• a model tutorial teaching sequence (introduction – remember - model - try - apply - secure - review and reflect)
• 30 pages of sample one-to-one lessons for maths and English at various levels

You can download a PDF of the guide from the DCSF website here.