If you are anti private school are you also anti tutoring?

[WWGD]

Putting aside the obvious - that a tutor is about £2k a year and private school about £25k a year…

My kids are state educated. Many of our friends are surprised by this as they go private, but our objection is political as much as financial. We just don’t believe it is right to buy that level of privilege and opportunity. We’d also rather spend that money on holidays etc.

dd has asked for a tutor in subjects she is struggling with. I have arranged this. But this too is buying privilege and opportunity. Though not the networking and prestige.

I am comfortable with my decisions. I am just wondering whether people who are anti private school for political reasons also think tutoring is beyond the pale?

I was going to put this in aibu but actually am interested in people’s views rather than being flamed.

A quick glance at this thread reveals that at least 50% of posters are using the word privilege as if it’s an everyday concept with a fixed definition.

On this thread it means:

going to private school
paying for a tutor
living in a catchment area for a “good school”
going on holiday
going abroad on holiday
having books
playing musical instruments
having swimming lessons

You can have privilege or you can buy privilege.

Seems to be another exercise in middle class people virtue signalling the extent to which they appear to self flagellate for having the means to pay for books and swimming lessons and holidays while at the same time castigating others for having more means than them to offer their children things they consider better.

In your opinion.

Of course, that's how these things work

You only tutor a child to help them get ahead or to provide what a school isn't providing.
Morally that's no different to sending a child to an independent school.

It's mental gymnastics to excuse 1 but like down your nose at the other

All state school sixth forms in my borough are academically selective, and this is the case I’ve heard from friends elsewhere. These are so-called comprehensives (ie not grammar schools). Comprehensive up to 16 only. Then selective.

(Yes, all is probably an exaggeration, before you start forensically pulling my post apart. Doesn’t detract from the point being made, though.)

I think you want to have your cake and eat it. You want the social cachet and moral bragging rights of having your kids attend a state school, but you also want to buy them a leg-up so they have an advantage over those less privileged kids in their school that you're so keen for them to interact with.

I also suspect you live in the catchment area of a a good state school which usually means a more expensive home.

None of this is that different from using your money on paid for schooling.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/05/professor-if-you-read-your-kids-youre-unfairly-disadvantaging-others-katherine-timpf/

How about parents helping their own children?
What if they have money and can pay for tuition but cannot read themselves so cannot help their own child? That is unfair too right?
We need them all raised by the state from birth. All equal. It is the only way. 😂

I think using the word all is misleading because it’s not the case, as you yourself point out in your final sentence…….

👏👏

Exactly

A lot of posters talking about parents preferring vapes and booze to paying for tutoring. It's the hierarchical version of Private School parents saying all the grammar school kids chose sports cars, mansion and pools over education.

All of you are missing the point that if all schools were as good as private there wouldn't be such bunfights over why some people can get it while others can't.

It's men. They'd rather pay for bombs and war than health and education.

Oh no! Another form of privilege that nobody here has mentioned so far!

The LCD has got lower, folks. Your kids are privileged if you can read and write.

OK.

Whats your take on comprehensives having selective sixth forms? Which is the actual point I’m making.

My take is that life is not fair. Never has been, never will be, so we make the best choices we can for our dc within that. I was from a poor WC background, dsis dbro and I all got scholarships to grammar school in the early 60’s. It was a real stretch for our dps to provide the uniform never mind the extras, but they prioritised education over other things. Dad’s brother and family prioritised house, car and holidays abroad. We had none of those things.

I am very grateful to my parents for having made the sacrifices they did for our education. We all have had happy and successful working lives, two of us in education.

i find it bizarre that people would not be criticised for spending money on holidays, cars, houses, but are criticised for spending it on their child’s education.

i don’t actually think private schools are always the best option for a child, but when parents believe that it is the best option, or that their child needs extra tutoring, then why would it not be ok to spend money on that but ok to upgrade the car?

This is such a ridiculous caricature. Do you consume a lot of right wing media? If so, seems like you should step away, because it's making you dehumanise others.

As a Labour voter who also makes a good income, I definitely have a lot of things that average people don't have.

I also want everyone in the country to get a good education so they can develop critical thinking skills (and hopefully not vote for fascists or make stupid comments about how all people from a different, "other" group are a certain way).

If I think the local schools are too bad for my kid, then why wouldn't I want them to be improved for all?

Agree. Make ALL state schools across the UK as good as independent schools ie not just in London, and there would be no need for tutoring or independent schools or grammar schools. Until that happens then all parents will continue to buy advantage for their DC in whatever way they can. To think otherwise is ridiculous.

I have no take on it - that’s not why I commented on your post. I was commenting on your hyperbolic use of “all”.

I am reading this thread not to lament how unprivileged some people are but because I am as I mentioned in my first post fascinated by the concept of privilege. Only one poster has so far provided me with a definition and I think she’s probably correct.

"also want everyone in the country to get a good education so they can develop critical thinking skills"

It's not happening though is it? It's a postcode lottery and FYI Labour are doing nothing to improve that.

I find you to be completely naive and you have that smug liberal assumption of moral superiority.

FYI I was brought up in a champagne socialist household so understand your viewpoint however I completely disagree with it. I don't go around insulting your intelligence for having that view, unlike you who insulted me.

@LeanToWhatToDo "Tutoring has gamed the grammar system completely, cutting swathes of poorer income families off from that level of education, which should be open to all as it is meant to be free."

This. It is so true.

The local superselective is full of kids tutored to get through the selection test, and then tutored to keep up the pace. There are many job opportunities for tutoring in our town. I'm sue it keeps the local economy afloat.

What "helps" is that 2 of the local State secondaries are really not "nice" (in many different ways) So parents tutor to grammar or go private.

My daughter is in the local high school now and learning a lot of resilience.

@PurpleThistle7 Could you expand on this? I mean, in what way is she learning resilience?

The REAL privileged start in life is having loving, healthy, happy, devoted parents and that has nothing to do with the family’s financial status.

For me, private education in this country is about the entrenchment of inequality through systematic reproduction of class privileges, delivered by the education system at large. Hence I think that we would have a fairer, more equal society and better education overall if there were no private schools and if, in particular, places like Eton, Harlow, Gordonstoun ceased to exist. Their function is to an extent school children about their rightful place in a class system. This is a larger political issue. If individuals want to send their own child to private school I don’t consider that my business.

Tutoring does bestow some privilege and is also part of how our system entrenches inequity through education, though obvs not to same degree as elite private education. However, again if Individuals feel it’s best and can afford it for their child I am not going to make an issue of that as it is not my business.

State 6th forms will have minimum requirements for A Levels, but will usually offer other courses. And even the stated requirements aren't necessarily set in stone. DS2 didn't meet the requirements but they let him stay on and do A Levels.

The area I live in doesn't actually have many private schools, but I'd be surprised if they didn't also have minimum requirements for A Levels.

We did use a tutor for DS2. It got him over the line in GCSE English and he had maybe 8 weeks of tutoring. My only regret was not doing it sooner

Ah right. So just a distraction technique.

And Google is your friend. I’ve just looked up the meaning of privilege (you can do it too) and it’s pretty clear to me what it means both itself and regarding this thread in particular.

Of course it’s relative, and that’s the slightly daft thing about it. But the left in particular have become rather obsessed by it, and then tie themselves into knots.

Hence I think that we would have a fairer, more equal society and better education overall

@Lotsnlotsoflove why would we have a better education overall?
This is interesting as there have been lots of comments on other threads saying that state schools are better than private schools, better teaching, better results etc.
Yet no one has managed to answer the question that if state schools are indeed better than private schools, why the desire to ban the latter?

Tutoring goes under the radar for university applications as it doesn’t have to be declared, so useful for contextual offers. I know families who’ve deployed this tactic for Bristol.
Ethically more acceptable than private school?