To not understand why parents are so unwilling to take my advice (tutor)?

[rosesinmygarden]

I'm a very experienced tutor and teacher. I tutor students for high stakes exams and have had excellent results and many happy customers for about 15 years.

I offer a lot for my price. Homework, lesson reports, parents' consults, extra resources and advice between sessions as well as years of experience tutoring students in the area. I do all this happily as I want my students to succeed.

Over the past couple of years I've noticed parents are becoming really unwilling to take on my advice. I'm constantly finding that they argue back and become very angry and accusative if I give constructive criticism/advice. They seem less and less willing to support their child or put any effort in, yet want stellar results. This exam requires a team effort for success. An hour a week with a tutor will not guarantee fabulous success for most. And why hire a tutor with my experience, then choose to ignore their advice or even accuse them of having an ulterior motive when they attempt to tell you something you don't want to hear?

I've been accused of all kinds lately and am finding that my results are slipping as a result of this change in attitude. It's really affecting my motivation. I've always loved my job but am finding it quite soul destroying at times lately.

Stamp duty 250k to 925k is 5%, VAT is 20%.

Stamp duty also doesn't vary by school catchment. So, errrr, no.

So many people on this thread don’t realise that state primary schools do not tutor for the 11plus but private schools do. It was certainly expected that at my sons’ state primary that you were expected to tutor them yourself, or pay someone, to tutor them to stand any chance at getting a place at Grammar school. At DS1 class in local Grammar about 50% of pupils seemed to have come from local prep schools and some from out of the county!

What happens to houses which sit under multiple/overlapping catchments? We recently had an “outstanding” secondary go to “inadequate”— would’ve been a shame to pay 20% on top of the house price, then to have this happen. Does this VAT only apply to those with children, or do pensioners get to also pay a 20% tax because their house purchase choice has outstanding schools down the road?

Haha exactly 🤣. Bonkers concept

That's good you have that choice.

My DD is in a church school even though it goes against my principles because it was the only one that could meet her needs.

Labour didn't go far enough in just banning new Grammar schools. It's so unfair on the DC in the Grammar areas. My DH lives in a non-Grammar area and the transition to have high school is just so much simpler and better.

Clearly the suggestion of VAT on house prices in 'good catchment' areas was somewhat tongue in cheek (or maybe you didn't pass the verbal reasoning paper?)

But it does shine a light on the fact there is actually a 4-tier system in secondary education across the UK. Three of them heavily favour families with enough cash to access them, one of them is having 20% added to that route.

Those stuck in the 4th tier of
• not a fee-paying school
• not tutored outside their state primary to pass 11+
• not living in the expensive catchment area of a renowned excellent comprehensive

are clearly heavily on the back foot.Regardless of their family's attitude to education, commitment to homework time etc.

My preference would be to see the allocation of resources & teaching ability to be distributed fairly across the whole country - but for 14 years, enough of the electorate have disagreed with me about this to preclude it from happening! Lets hope there's a different outcome next month eh?

I don't know any DC who did the 11+ without having been tutored at least since Y4.

That is just crazy. Mine were untutored, got no prep in their state primaries, did some 11+ familiarisation/practice by themselves (I bought them a few books) and all got very high scores. What people don't seem to realise is that, if you have to heavily tutor to get into grammar, you most likely need to keep tutoring throughout. It doesn't bode well for a fulfilling university time either.

I agree with PP's who describe parents who feel that outsourcing by payment is the solution.
A few years ago, I was asked by a teaching colleague and friend if I would start her young son off on the piano. I can play myself but don't have the specific qualification to teach the instrument. She accepted that, but explained that, as her DS was very shy with strangers, it could be hard to tell if a lack of progress was lack of ability, or his reaction to an unfamiliar person.
We agreed that I'd do "starter lessons" for a term, and then give her honest feedback about whether he had potential, and it was worth finding a fully qualified person.
I agreed to this, and would go back to her house after school to give him a lesson. I charged a modest fee as it was not my qualification area.
Her friend, whose daughter was also at our school, was a SAHM, and asked to "jump on the bandwaggon", so I agreed to teach her daughter as well. At the end of the school day, both Mums and their children came back to her friend's house, and basically socialised while I taught each child in turn. They were both nearly six years old; far too young to undertake regular practice off their own bat without gentle encouragement listening to them play, etc.
So we began, and friend's DS made respectable progress; I was able to report back to Mum that he would profit from regular tuition.
The little girl, however, was a non-starter; she was a nice cooperative child, but it became painfully obvious after a few weeks that she had not been within striking distance of a keyboard from one week to the next. It was an agonizing Groundhog Day experience for both of us.
The trial period was coming to a close, and I told her Mum that sessions with me were coming to an end, and her DD was not really making any progress. Her response was to offer to pay more; she could not fathom that, with a child of that age, parental involvement was vital.

It's a completely different thing when DC are having to go to sub standard secondary schools because their parents can't afford to pay for tutors.

@VitoBurrito a growing number are being tutored through University too. Some parents want the higher status universities at any cost too, no matter what the starting subject.

Mine did 10 months of tutoring, in Y5

One of my DC is studying Medicine now. Some who were tutored through secondary education are struggling. You can be tutored in a single subject but you can’t tutor the natural intelligence to grasp complex concepts very quickly, consolidate it onto a broad knowledge base, link it to other complex concepts and quickly move on to the next one. Tutoring has its limits and the poor DC who is in that situation and realises that.

@VitoBurrito quite.

I have very mixed feelings on tutoring - I think it's great and have done it myself, but worry that people think they're buying a grade or a grammar place. I was a very bookwormish child (now an academic at uni), I tutored myself through my own 11+ using those exam booklets from WH Smith and a very old, second hand copy of First Aid for English and my mother marked my mock exams for me. Unsurprisingly I went to a very well known academic university. I took the same approach with my children, the ADHD one was more distracted so I encouraged lots of educational online games, but I am concerned that children (and adults) have to learn that they are responsible for their own learning. Teachers and tutors can guide, but they won't be in the exam with you.

Goodness, this thread has been an eye opener for me.

We will be going through 11 plus in the autumn. I have DC in private prep which does focus on VR and non VR and they do all their prep at home. In addition, I have a tutor for them for an hour a week. We don't do anything else with them at home aside from that (in terms of academics) and I've assumed that they will get into a super selective London day school. Neither the tutor nor the school have told me otherwise.
Sounds like we had better engage more at home...

I wish my tutor had given me this advice, OP, and I'm now happily taking it from you :-) Their tutor doesn't even set any homework and always just said that "they'll be fine". Hmmm.

Your children are already at an advantage, since they are receiving VR and NVR lessons at school and probably receiving homework geared towards 11 plus success. Most preps are geared up to prepping children for 11+/independent entrance. That literally their job.

Many of my students go to ordinary state schools and the gulf is massive. A student I saw yesterday gets 10 spellings a week and times tables practice from their school. That's it.

Having said that, doing some practice papers/11+ books over the summer would just seem common sense. I'd be surprised if any tutor didn't suggest that.

It's perfectly possible to prep your children for 11 plus at home, very cheaply. It does take time and effort though, which is why many parents who can afford it go down the tutor route.

@rosesinmygarden out of interest if 10 spellings a week and times tables is not enough. What would you say a kid in yr5 should be doing at home?

If you take a moment to look at my previous posts on this thread you'll see I've already posted some advice.

My experience is that if the child is of the right natural academic calibre for a super selective grammar and has the requisite level of self-motivation, it takes very minimal parental input and little or no tutoring. If you are pushing a square peg into a round hole, tutor involvement and parental input have to be considerable.

I think this is actually, sadly, very untrue.

For a start, the quality of primary school education is pretty varied and will have a huge impact.

Second, even a motivated child will need parental support to know what to study, to access resources etc.

This may well have been true 20 years ago. It may also be true for certain grammar schools. It is 100% not true for all.

Our primary school is frankly, not great from an academic perspective. But there arr, I think, 8 grammar schools in the area. Based on the above, you would assume a decent number of children would go onto grammar? In fact, I think last year it was 2 out of 60. In ds year it was 3 - and I know 2 of those families and they were very much focused on their children getting in.

I am not talking about twenty years ago. This is my own direct and quite recent experience of London super selective grammars. It is true that my 3 DC went to good state primaries in a fairly affluent area and the situation you are describing sounds like it might be different. I would guess that the schools you are talking about are most likely not super selectives if there are eight of them.

The point I am making is that the DC who are hothoused for schools like the ones my children have gone to tend to not be able to keep up with the pace and it can be a very negative experience with severe MH implications.

Of course there are some DC who are naturally very bright and were also hothoused as belt and braces and they were fine academically but their pressure tended to come from helicopter parents.

There is a whole lucrative industry around coaching DC to get into schools that are often the wrong ones for them. Of course there are very good and responsible tutors out there who want the best for their students but there is also an element that is quite dubious in terms of morality as the end game can be just getting their success stats up and keeping the parents happy, with scant regard for the reality of the pressure at the next stage for the DC.

Sutton/London/surry has 8 grammar schools although all single sex, including Tiffin whose girls and boy schools are among the top in the country.
Edited to add : this is the area I live in.

My point is that your experience is valid but completely misses that this is not true for lots of other families. There are many state primaries in the broader surrey/london/sutton area that are perfectly fine but in no way are they anywhere near getting children even slightly ready and that those children will, with the exception of the absolutely brightest, need further support if they want to get into a grammar. That might not mean a tutor necessarily, but it's a lot more than just the child being self motivated enough to do a bit of home study.

Maybe I am just talking about the absolute brightest that don't need tutoring or parental manoeuvre. One of the stars in my youngest's year was a refugee child who hadn't spoken any English two years before sitting the entrance exam. He got in without any tutoring. Of course he has sailed through. He is going to be studying Medicine at Oxford and wants to go back to practice medicine in his war ravaged country. In my opinion it would have been a travesty if a tutored up DC had taken his place.