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)

WOW OUCH! I'm not a pushy middle class parent. I'm a single (was teenage) parent who only works part time and lives in a council house! My DD has learning difficulties that weren't being fully dealt with by the school for two years while she was undergoing diagnosis and awaiting a TOD. Obviously she fell behind at school, and is having to catch up super quick now she has the support she needs!

So why on earth shouldn't i hire i private tutor for DD? I want her to do well, and she needs desperately one to one teaching which isn't always possible at school all day every day. Yes i teach her things myself, but i'm not a teacher, and want the best for her. I'm sorry if you think this means i'm cheating by giving DD the eduction she needs & deserves, but you're totally wrong.

I think the OP is right when it comes to 11 plus coaching, which is what most of the children I teach go to coaches for. You can teach children to pass that exam because it's so formulaic and that artificially increases their IQ.

This year we had an untutored child who is in all top sets and a massively hard worker fail the 11 plus. A tutored child whi is in all bottom sets and won't write without a gun to his head passed it and is off to grammar in Sept.

Not fair on either the children who have places taken away from them by less intelligent tutored children or on the children who are coached to get in only to find they struggle when they get there.

But for general exams I don't think it's cheating because you're not competing against anybody else.

Manicinsomniac - I agree.

It's a ridiculous op because so much of the National Curriculum is so heavily dependent on parental input anyway. The whole system has destroyed social mobility and depends on educated people passing on what they know to their children as best they can. If that includes private tutors bring it on. Thank you for spending your money that way and increasing the knowledge economy of Britain.

The OP is so ludicrous I just don't know where to start. How about going to live in a communist country?

Have to say, manicinsomniac, can't disagree with that, having failed the 11+ myself.

Where is the OP? I'd love to know what's behind all this.

Didn't the OP say she's well off? So I'm assuming paying a tutor is not an issue. My guess is that she's got a bright child and she's been Ms SmuggyMcSmug about this; but some other - tutored - child is now stealing her child's thunder. So she can no longer lord it over the other parents.

My other guess is that she's got a serious drug habit that makes her post bonkers threads on AIBU. She won't give it up and use the money to give her kids a bit of a leg up in their education. Tsk.

Rubbish, OP. For one thing it would be unenforceable. For another it is no different to doing the best you can for your children by encouraging them to learn, buying books, limiting television, and the like.

I'm guessing either -

• journalist trawling for outraged soundbites
• a parent whose PFB has been pipped at the post for a grammar school place/private school bursary by a tutored child!

Either way, they are talking poo.

I'm guessing 14 year old who's just read Das Kapital and who got beaten by Tarquin from the nice estate in his Latin grammar test.

'This year we had an untutored child who is in all top sets and a massively hard worker fail the 11 plus. A tutored child whi is in all bottom sets and won't write without a gun to his head passed it and is off to grammar in Sept. '
yopur post makes no sense.The 11+ is supposed to pick children with academic potential (ie intelligence) not the most hard working or even the highest attaining.

I feel a bit sorry for children who have to have private tuition as it must be exhausting on top of a day's school, homework etc. I had private tuition myself as a child when I was behind in a language, and my sister was tutored in maths - it was really demotivating - as if the "school" day never ended - and having to be polite all the time, even in your own home - although in those days there was only John craven's news round or blue Peter on offer as an alternative (giving away my age there). I pulled up the language, but S still failed the maths, so in terms of direct benefit, I suppose it was 50 per cent successful, but the misery you felt in your tummy when you knew you weren't allowed to relax and had to put your polite and hard working face back on for yet another hour - no thank you.

You can be tutored to pass the 11+ same as you can be to pass GCSEs.

I was paranoid because I didn't tutor my son that some of the lesser ability kids would nip in and take 'his' place .... fortunately they didn't!

I did send him to a tutor for 2 hours before the exams for exam techniques and avoiding stupid mistakes. I did not deem it neccessary to havea bright child tutored for 2 hours a week for 4 years in the hope of a grammar place. those children flounder horribly at grammar school and the only thing that keeps them going is parental input.

But if you have parental input, encouragment and aspirations, you will succeed in the most deprived of schools.

Personally it pisses me off big time when I come across a truely bright kid with parents that don't give a flying feck and dont support their child. Inevitably they fall by the wayside, know they can get away with truanting, slipping down the sets year by year until they leave with a handful of worthless GCSEs instead of the A*-B's they were truely capable of. I've yet to meet one who has hoyed him/herself up by the bootstraps and seen education as a way out of a deprived lifestyle.

How dare parents try and improve their childs education, what has the country come to.

'You can be tutored to pass the 11+ same as you can be to pass GCSEs.'

'I was paranoid because I didn't tutor my son that some of the lesser ability kids would nip in and take 'his' place .... fortunately they didn't!'

Those 2 sentences contradict one another.i truly believe you can get a bit qicker with practice ,but at the end of theday you can't polish a turd.You can't tutor someone to solve a conundrum for example.

Also I think that when low achievers pass the 11+ , get to grammar school and flounder, many people believe it is because they have been intensively tutored.
However a low -attaining child will flounder purely because he is behind the other children for whatever reason (lack of effort, poor primary teaching) whatever his intelligence.it will take a while to catch up!

Because people who can afford to pay for private tuition have most likely worked hard to earn their money. Very few people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths. My grandparents lived in a 1 bed council estate all their lives but my parents worked hard enough to send us to private school and pay for private tuition. Doesn't mean we wouldn't have done well without it - they just worked hard all their lives to be able to give their children an advantage. We live in a capitalist society I'm afraid.

..and why do you need to pay someone to tutor your child.There is no special skill involved.What qualifies someone to be an 11+ tutor, except that they can find someone gullible enough to pay them?

Aimeesmum - high five. Absolutely not cheating, you're simply bringing about the logical solution for your daughter. People forget how exhausting it is to be a single parent with responsibilities like bills, health appointments, making sure the home and appliances are in running order, and that's before you even dealt with the important question of how to get the best income for your children without being away from home all hours. If a tutor gives her the help that you feel you're not best qualified or have the time to provide, then so be it, that's not cheating at all.
Yummyhoney - you're right to warn about dodgy websites, and though I've recommended books and online resources, every parent should beware of the websites (or even tutors) that say "I know what's coming out, this is what you should "spot" and memorise!"....and steer clear of dodgy advice like that. I even had a school teacher say that one year: clearly she had been absolutely scrupulous and not seen the paper as she spotted the wrong topics. Thankfully we didn't listen to her. And those websites and individuals that say they actually have the paper - the pupil can be failed and barred from the exam altogether if proven to have access to the paper before the exam and used that info to unfair advantage. If a student has prepared thoroughly (not necessarily prepared everything) they will be able to answer any topic that comes up.

I've got a chemistry degree and I've been helped my brother revise and prepare him for his chemistry GCSE. I've not been paid to do this but I've tutored him so should I be banned from seeing him or fined heavily OP?

Wotnot you can be taught to pass certain papers, to analyse them, practice enough and the NVR paper especially. You go and look at psychometric tests. You can teach your self to pass them, or at least find the attributes an employer wants and answer correctly. That is what parents pay for - expertise in how to correctly analyse the paper.

I don't know about other parts of the country but our 4 paper 11+ is now a 2 paper 11+ (just the Maths and NVR) resulting in an awful lot of illiterate and dyslexic children in Grammar schools. I am NOT implying dyslexia is a form of dim-wittedness before some puts words in my mouth either! However as boys are usually better numerically then girls, girls better at the verbal/vocabulary side - it does seem a little skewed.

Fortuantley 4 of our 17 secondaries are grammars, both co-ed and single sex.

Parents have every right to pay for extra tuition for their kids. In fact, they have every right to spend their money on whatever they want. I can think of a lot worse things to spend your cash on than tutoring kids and I agree with the poster who said "welcome to the real world". People will always compete and strive to get ahead - the world is a competitive place. What's ignorant about stating the facts? Maybe these "pushy" parents should spend all their cash on booze and fags instead - that's ok then?

There shouldn't be the need for any of it, why is state education not enough for so many children to reach their full potential that's what we should be debating.
My own experience is that at 11 years old I was told I wasn't good at maths, so put in the last but one set. Had I gone into bottom set i'd have had support and been made to work but in my set we were just basically written off.
Nobody ever questioned how a child could be in top set for everything else but producing zero work in maths. Had anyone joined the dots and realised that particular class basically dicked around for 5 years or if my parents had got me a tutor maybe i'd have got a GCSE pass.
That seems unfair to me.

'This year we had an untutored child who is in all top sets and a massively hard worker fail the 11 plus

They should appeal then.

I'm showing my age - but the previous system of Grammar, tech colleges and sec moderns was a brilliant system - kids went to schools that enhanced their strengths.

Bloody stupid system now - and I can say that! I've got one who is top set grammar, one who is bottom set comprehensive so I see it from both sides. Both are state schools. If only my comprehensive had had the opportunity to be filtered out into a tech college. But hey! He's just one in a lost generation.

A one-size-fits-all education does not work. People are individuals and cramming them into a model syustem is just so awfully wrong.