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)

My brother couldnt read by the age of 8 and the teacher was useless so my parents scrimped and saved to get him a tutor to help (they obviously also read with them but he tended to play up with them in a way that kids dont with a tutor)

Sorry that my brother struggled and my parents decided to spend their money on this rather than fags and booze.

"this is why kids in shitty council estates living on or below the poverty line are fucking DOOMED."

no it isn't

chidlren on council estates are doomed, if they are, by the educational ideology which considers actually teaching children anything - that might in any way be useful but is dull to learn - as oppressive and cruel

teaching of times tables and reading is left to the parents and if the parents are crap then screw the kids

that, kerry, is why children are doomed and it was under Labour that this philosophy blossomed, and if aspiring middle class parents didn't make the effort their children would be doomed too, and then we'd all be fucking doomed

kerrymumbles, I live in London, so there is a school every 200 yards - parents can choose where to send kids, so it's not like in rural areas where you have one school servicing a 20 mile radius.

I would say that parental input is the biggest factor in a childs success. BUT! you also have to want to succeed. Libraries are open, the internet is free - you wanna learn, you will learn. You wanna follow the herd and be a sheep - you will be. (ooh I mixed a metaphore, that'll be the MN police on my case for not writing coherantly).

I work in secondary education and we have 76 feeder primary schools

YABU. I am far from pushy or middle class! BUT I, like most parents, want my child to do well. If that means paying for a private tutor, I will. I will save and work extra hours if I have to, go without myself, to be able to afford to do so. I thought that's what most parents did to help their child/ren to do well. You shouldn't begrudge those that want to or can just because perhaps you can't. That's just nonsense.

yes ... just coz you live on a council estate doesnt mean your parents are poor, smoke weed, drink meths and a whole manner of other sterotypical uberclass traits! Bursaries and scholarships are available. Mind you I only know of one private school locally - and that does issue a lot of scholarships. And the two prep schools are chokka of sparkies and chippies kids - not the offspring of stock broker - both pre schools havea nigh on 100% success rate at 11+ tho to be fair, they do weed out the unlikely ones and replace with more academically inclined children.

BTW - public schools arre the 'posh' ones

I find it, not offensive, coz bugger all offends me but a bit 'eyebrow raising' that you imply people on council estates are trash parents.

In this economic climate, any of us could find ourselves in social housing.

However that's your prerogative to hold those views.

goose - don't all schools have to follow a national curriculum?

why yes they do, and it's the National Curriculum that is failling children

sorry, fucking dooming children

there are improvements being made but basically, how is the failure of tens of thousands of children the responsibility of a bunch of mothers who've never met them and have nothing to do with them at all?

answer - it ain't, it's the schools' job, and the schools aren't doing it

and can one safely assume that the best teachers don't teach in council estate schools?

Wrong! a lot of grammar teachers could not cut the mustard in comprehensive schools - it's only the fact that parents keep their kids buttoned down that grammar schools aren't in the grip of a riot every day! you would not believe the conversations I have at parents evening, usually resulting in me thinking 'that just would not happen where I work'! And I work in what would be called an estate school - our kids are lovely, mainly, odd one or two you know will be on crimewatch in a few years - but hey, even money - and oodles of it - doesnt stop generally deemed priviliged kids from getting records and doing time. Otto Ferry and jamie Blandford leap immediatley into my mind.

In some parts of the capital, the meth, weed and coke are to be found in the mansions of wealthy parents!

Kerrymumbles - sorry to disappoint you but I don't think OP is posting on behalf of hard pressed parents in council housing whose children's schools are not teaching their pupils well. I do find the National Curriculum extremely mystifying myself and not at all an improvement on the old syllabus. It's not difficult to teach or coach your child in it (if you have the time), but it's very wishy washy.

I live in London. Not inner city. The inner city kids all bus to where I work. Freom north to south of the river. The Kent kids all bus in too, their schools have all gone academy and parents HATE academies more.

I'd still wonder why you bang on about 'council dwelling citizens' as if they were some form of scum though.

I'll tell you summat for nothing though. My grammar boy, doesnt give a flying feck who he mixes with, black, white, asian, rich, poor - grammar school is the best social leveller ever invented. Kids on an equal playing field but with a common goal. And I'll throw in a bone as well for the PC mob - racism just is not invented (tho' they tease each other) and I don't see any of this ludicrous PC-ness either where everybody get offended by a random comment apart from the person it's directed to.

However my comprehensive boy, well, TBH, there are reasons why animals eat their young. He comes home with the most god awful bits of convo that can only be attributed to a BNP manifesto - and I assure you he does not get any of those thoughts in this house. It takes me hours to undo the damage done.

Why not ban private schools instead? There's a lot more paid-for education going on there than in individual tuition.

I had a private tutor for maths because the teaching at my school, was so crap. I got an A, but the best thing it taught me was how to make notes and how to study properly. Tutoring didn't make me achieve something I wouldn't have been capable of, it just taught me how to learn effectively something my school had failed to do.

I then went on to get a first in a mathematical subject and pass a very hard mathematical professional qualification without any tutoring.

The tutor taught me something that just wasn't covered in school and set me up for my future career and it's something I will always be very grateful for. I will not hesitate to do the same for my children.

YABVVU and just a bit jealous.

We all draw assumptions - I dare say you are assuming I'm something I'm not.

I bet you have a mental image of me being middle class anglo saxon . I'm first generation prodigeny of immigrants .... pass as white immigrants - but I look like the mainstream, talk like the mainstream - only difference is I was brought up with one ethic - doent matter who you are, where you came from, work ethic is the only thing that defines a person. I dont care if you are black, white, martian, sweeping the roads.

Opportunities are made, not given. If you want to sit back and cry that you are not given opportunities - then you are foolish. In this country we have a free education. Free libraries. Free access to the internet. You can choose whether to use a local teenage patois or not. You can choose whether to hang round sink estate stairwells with your peers, or not. You can choose what you want to be. You can choose your morals. You can choose your religion. We are very lucky in that aspect. You can choose to remove yourself from your social background - and when you become rich and famous like Cheryl Cole you can still pretend to be one!

my parents both lived in council houses and were born during the war. they both went to grammar schools and passed the 11 plus without tutoring. Both had good careers and moved into the middle classes. what has changed? why are kids on council estates doomed?

should the grammar schools have been abolished. did they encourage aspiration.

alemci, I think grammar schools should be reintroduced :)

Private tutoring is needed now the MC kids are forced to mingle with the riff-raff, a better suggestion would be for the (not)working class kids to be removed from the class and given the private tutoring(most of them certainly need the elocution lessons) and thereby allowing those who are there to learn to get on with it!:p