to think people who pay for private tuition are just cheating?

[mdowdall]

There should be a stealth tax on all private tuition so that all private tutors have to be registered and charge, say, £500 an hour (enough to derter most families) - most of it going back to the treasury. I mean, why should the kids of pushy middle class parents do better in their grades than they ordinarily would have done just because they can afford to pay for extra tuition? People should just accept, if their kids are a bit thick in certain subjects, well, tough.
(btw - kids with autism, other probs etc - Im not including them - they should get all the free extra private tuition they need)

It's not cheating. Cheating would be not putting in any work and being given the answers to an exam or being told what the questions were in advance.
Yes, it's an advantage but it's not unfair. Unfortunate maybe in the respect that not everyone can afford private tuition but that's life I'm afraid.

I tutor.

Currently I have a boy who is just struggling desperately with writing - very intelligent articulate boy (chats a bit much and doesn't listen well - as do lots his age) who just cannot get things down on paper, has huge chunks of phonic knowledge missing and really benefits from someone focusing on him one-to-one so he can't use the writing avoidance strategies he has at school.

A girl who is really quite quiet, well behaved but just with zero confidence with maths.

Another boy with huge chunks of phonics that he just didn't "get" who floats below the surface at school as he just sits and doodles so isn't actively misbehaving so gets away with doing nowt.

And another boy who just didn't quite get KS2 maths the first time round so now he's moving into KS3 the foundations aren't there so needs some consolidation work on the stuff he wobbled through upper juniors with.

Most of them either lively boys with a range of work avoidance techniques that its much harder to do when you've got someone individually on your case, or just kids lacking confidence or ones who just need a few holes filling in of their basic understanding - usually the quieter more obliging ones at school who didn't draw attention to the fact that there's a blurry haze where long multiplication should be fitting in.

Yeah - definitely overinflating grades there aren't I? Definitely cheating all these state school kids into private schools!

no need to be rude bellavita.

AgentZigZag - you deserve a gold star for pulling your grades up too.

here

I taught myself to touch type - took a lot of bloody practice but DH is envious.

Good grief OP. I can see you certainly didn't have any additional private education. You needed it though.

Cheating? My arse.

My parents paid £15 an hour for a maths tutor once a week in the run up to my A levels 25 years ago. They weren't MC. Far from it. So no extra help for anyone to supplement what the state provides. Lets abolish private health too. Totally unreasonable that some people bypass the NHS and go to a private hospital. May them add to join the waiting lists with the rest of us.

Awww thanks RB, the education bug bit me and I'm still feeling the effects with the OU

And good on yer for learning to touch type, I love typing, it's so much easier on the hand than with a pen.

I'm guessing you're p'd off because someone else's child is having a tutor and yours isn't?

Some good points here so i won't repeat them, but you are being ridiculously unreasonable. Your choice of words is deliberately controversial too. Whether, and how, tutoring can help a child is a sensible topic for discussion. But not one that starts with 'pushy middle class parents' who should just accept their child is 'thick'.

This is a wind up, surely?

How about genetic testing prior to the issue of progeny? Clever bods can only mate with those who are "a bit thick" to even up the genetic playing field.

(Lovely term that, "a bit thick". Does it apply to people who can't spell and punctuate?)

it's NOT cheating. I have been a secondary teacher and a private tutor and I would never do anything that would constitute cheating when helping a pupil. Sometimes one person can explain something in a way that helps a child to understand clearly when their own teacher could not.
Also there are many children who are for eg brilliantly gifted at, say, science and maths and would easily get the grades for A levels and university but need support to get the C grade in English that is insisted upon by further education. Can't see what's wrong with giving them that extra help.

Have you read any of the posts made OP? You don't seem to be adequately responding to any of them. Is it because you are now ready to admit you are being unreasonable?

smallwhitecat - im not getting into any debate involving SN kids as experience it nearly always ends in tears.

then you shouldn't have mentioned SN in your post.

LolaRennt - I cant type fast enough to respond - hence my repeated typos

Good on you AZZ (or is it AZ?) I am still learning too, distance learning to go back into law at a higher level. I love reading case summaries, geek that I am.

Touch typing makes life a lot easier!

I can teach you to touch type Mdowdall - I charge a great rate of £500 per hour .

Well the solution seems to be that we have to find the child with the least competent parents in Britain, who attends the worst possible school. We should all parent our children in the same way those parents are doing and reduce the standards in all good schools, and then everything will be right with the world.

YABVU

Lots of things make it unfair. Private tutoring isn't one of them. Selecting a school higher up the league table = not fair? Parents being clever = unfair advantage?, parents giving a crap and being involved = unfair advantage??

My children all go to private school and gasp one of them even had private tuition for 2 years as she had LD.

I don't apologise, I don't care if it's not fair so have a

I was taught A level Maths in a portacabin by four crap teachers in two years. One of them told me he didn't understand why so many girls were doing Maths A Level as "why would they need it". I made a complaint and was allowed to not attend any more classes. My parents got me a great tutor. I passed Maths. I didn't need it as the other four A Levels I took got me into University. [showing off emoticon] I think the ground is unleveled enough.

That always happens to you, doesn't it SWC?

But to be fair to the OP, she didn't say it was 'OK for children with SN to be bought an advantage not available to comparable children without wealthy parents', she said 'they should get all the free extra private tuition they need'.

smallwhitecat - i look the cut of your jib, your last post tickled me. Seriously, I posted a thread a while back and didnt mention SN. Anyway, I had hundreds of SN parents on my case. So, if I post anything now I put an SN proviso in at the start just in case I offend anybody. In truth, the SN thing isnt really relevant here IMO - I think it's a separate argument.

I find your OP rude!

Empty shell - I wonder if you are tutoring my son....

I do private tuition and none of my students have ever had tutoring for entrance exams.

They are all mainstream pupils (I did have one private school pupil for a while ) who are either falling behind in English or seriously lacking in confidence. Hardly any of the parents seem to be what I would describe as 'very well-off'. Most are very ordinary families on an average income who have chosen to make this a priority, often for a year or two, not for the duration of their DC's school career.

In the case of one of my current students, I know that paying for the tuition is a bit of a stretch financially as her mum had told me so. Sometimes the student herself pays out of her Saturday job money (she is 18).

It keeps me in a job and I feel like I'm doing something valuable. I wish other parents could afford it, if that's what they want, but I can't help it if they can't. FWIW I keep my fee very low.