Is it the norm to have tutors for primary school children these days?

[Sugarbeach]

I didn't think it was the norm, but it seems that it is the norm in some part of the country (or the world even). DD is progressing well and is happy at her school, she is about to start Yr 3 where the work is expected to be more formal and there will be a ramping up of the homework I imagine. I was going to just leave the school and teacher to do their job, and not intervene too much unnecessarily. I'm paranoid and thinking whether the majority of children get lots of tutoring at home, so that it seems to be a good school or whether it IS a good school.

So..
is tutoring the norm in your opinion?
Is it mainly done for struggling subjects, or to hot house, or for 11+, or to make up or the lack of teaching at school?

I'm interested to know, it's so different to my days, I feel like I've been living under a rock....

I would love to be able to help my panicking dd1 gain confidence with her maths. I helped her learn to read, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Insecure parent? In this respect, yes. Its absolutely right that I don't feel secure enough in current primary maths to lead the way, especially for a child who is already defiant/feeling bad about her knowledge.

I can back it up (I was very good at maths at school, decades ago) but honestly would not know where the gaps were with nearly the same degree of speed and accuracy as her very sweet tutor. Who also has experience in motivating kids, and who doesn't get frustrated or impatient with her clients. dd has only had about 4 tutorials, and already I can see her catching up with where she 'should' be given her ability and her age. Best of all, she is happier about maths.

With literacy - no problem. French, music, anything creative - I wouldn't consider a tutor. But I suppose, to me, its fine to be able to put ones hands up and say 'I can't do this' when appropriate.

There are other areas of parenting I do far better, and perhaps some parents who are brilliant at home teaching opt out of those more than I do. We all have strengths and limitations. I am not a lazy parent, but I will never be the best person to teach maths, or sewing, or football, to any child.....beyond KS1.

Of course, Elibean. Not suggesting everyone can or should tutor everything. And your dd's tutor sounds worth the money.

Just making the point that not all tutors are as good; and that all parents should seriously consider heping their dcs themselves rather than automatically hiring a tutor; because not only may parents tutor better than 'professionals' but they and their dcs may get a lot out of the experience beyond the academic.

I dipped out a few pages ago after stating why I was getting my very average at English DS, 11, privately tutored.

Since then, many of the subsequent posters are telling me that a) I'm an idiot, b) I'm lazy, c) I'm insecure and d) what's so bloody hard about primary curricula that I couldn't teach it myself?...

I'd like all those parents who think it's easy and I should be doing myself to stop and think: Is my child perfect? What aspect of their lives is less-than-perfect? Maybe they're rude. Maybe they're monumentally self-absorbed. Maybe they're embarrassingly arrogant. Maybe they're painfully shy. Maybe they cannot socialise well. Maybe they're unable to remember to hang their clothes up from one day to the next which really annoys you as, how hard can it be? Maybe their rooms always resemble an explosion in Toys'R'Us. Maybe they cannot bath themselves or clean their teeth without you standing over them at 11.

Trouble is, you can shout, beg, cajole, bribe, reason all you like but it feels like a losing, uphill battle. Which always ends in frazzled failure.

What about if your DC isn't good at English? Why, suddenly should that be solvable with a lazy parent putting in some effort, because, evidently,.....

how hard can it be?.

What I guess I'm saying is that there appears to be this arrogance that, because I have an 'O' (and in my case 'A') level in English, I am a disgraceful failure of a parent if I cannot find a successful method to teach my DS how it's done; my DS who evidently hasn't learned adequately via the conventional methods of teaching available and utilised by trained professional teachers with many years of research, evidence-based practice and experience behind them- but who also have 27 other DC, with all their variety to teach and who have managed to eke a low pass out of my DS whereas I know he's capable of a comfortable pass.

Yes, I see your point, breadandbutterfly (good name, btw)

If parents want to have their children tutored, that is their prerogative.
My dd is taking the 11+ exam. I am more than capable of teaching my daughter. However, i decided that employing a tutor would be more beneficial for MY child, as i thought it would avoid the almost inevitable parent v child clash. This has been very successful and my daughter has made amazing progress.
However, my dh and i realise that employing a tutor for an hour a week is not sufficient and therefore my husband and i supplement the tuition with extra work at home.
I make no apologies for having my dd tutored. If my mother (who was a single parent) had not employed a tutor for myself and my siblings, we would not have had the opportunities we have had. I am grateful for this.

No, those gaps wouldn't be obvious to me breadandbutterfly. On the other hand, if my DD's tutor were to replace me at home my DD would be miles behind on general knowledge and content versus where she is now, because I much better educated than her tutor.

Tansie just a point not all tutors are trained professional teachers

I think getting a fully trained tutor is key. Recommendation from other teachers can be good. Also someone who has worked in school and is familiar with the the curriculum and various syllabus is essential

mum , yes I know they're not. You need to find one who can analyse precisely what your DC is struggling with and target that, don't you?

My DS doesn't just need 'more English', he has a specific inability that needs addressing, and buggered if I know how! Hence I will wheel in the professionals who do. I suspect many of those on here who profess amazement that any mum couldn't roll out the piece-of-piss teaching of Primary school do just that: More English. Often of the variety they learned 10-30 years ago, maybe regardless that the reason their DC is struggling is because those mainstream, tried and tested methods haven't worked for their DC.

The good thing about hiring help is that you can choose exactly what you want. Tis a buyer's market.

I'm a paranoid skinflint - if I do it myself, I know I'm not being ripped off!... Also, Tansie, with respect to specific difficulties, I searched for several years for someone who might understand my ds1's specific difficulties and what caused them, and know how to deal with them, but just got different people who focused on different things and neglected others without understanding the impact their particular focus had on other aspects of his development - nobody understood my ds1 as a whole person. And what's more, they all expected me to do particular exercises and extra work with ds1 at home, anyway, so there was no avoiding the tears and tantrums by passing him over to someone else, as they sent him straight back to me with all sorts of advice on what I should be doing with him every day.... I ended up very cynical about other peoples' expertise and realised that only I was an expert on my ds1, so however out of my depth I felt, I had to do a lot of the work, myself. If your child has difficulties that are not mainstream difficulties, then parenting is just tougher, generally - there isn't someone out there with all the answers for you, although there are people out there who can give you ideas. There are plenty of people expert on NT children and how to teach them how to pass their 11 plus, improve their English, swim, play the piano, etc, but they are more often than not no better at understanding your child's quirks than you are.

What I don't understand is in my day, we did not have teaching assistants. In my dds class, there is one teacher and 2 teaching assistants. So a max of 10 kids to an adult. the school sends home lots of literature apparently. So why are some parents still resorting to tutors (they must be as there are lots of advertises in the local paper and library for tutors, although a lot of mums I have spoken to do not admit to using tutors or teaching at home but their darling 3 year old still has somehow managed to learn how to read words beginning with Q by adsorption!)
Also, when I talk to other parents, SOME claim the school teaches them nothing much academic till child gets to 6.

My questions are:

1. Who is doing the teaching?
2. What are the schools doing?
3. Why are we failing some kids even with such a good ratio of adult to kids?
4. If it is failure on the parents

Part, how much should parents be doing?

rabbit- a point:

I sit DS down and say 'OK, we need to nail this, I want you to look at these statements. They're in pairs, 2 sentences each. I want you to rewrite the sentences joining them together so they still have the same meaning. Use connectives, consider starting the sentence with 'Because' and so forth. Here's a list to help you.

Then I will get you to write a short story, 5 lines, using those techniques. Remember capitals, punctuation, spelling, doe sit make sense and is it 'interesting'?'

DS (flumps into chair, chin on one forearm, heavy sigh, reproachful looks) 'Why? Do I have to? this is boring.'

Does it. Badly. We go over it, him dripping with frustrated irritation. Repeat ad nauseum.

Tutor: 'Hi DS2! OK, this is what we're doing today' (explains work).

DS2 'OK'.

Does it. Not necessarily well, but rewrites corrections.

Done.

tansie that's so NORMAL! Children always behave well with others!

I suppose then, once ur child finishes being tutored, you have much more time left to do other things with them. You are not frustrated etc etc. I don't see anything wrong in using tutors. But why won't mothers admit that they do?!

It is the norm around here but not in the lower levels of primary, just around the 11+ years. There was a mum I know though who from Year 3 wanted her DD to have a "private school standard" education while going to a state primary so the child used to be tutored at home after school by a teacher from a private school.

I am an immigrant mum myself, complete with accented English and a Third World education, whose nationality has been mentioned early on I think in the thread with regards to hothousing. I don't think what breadandbutterfly said about immigrant parents was anything but a compliment. Immigrants who are poor and uneducated are seen as wanting and doing the very best for their children academically, whereas the perception is definitely not so about the general, non-immigrant population with high social deprivation.

I am tutoring my DD for her 11+. It is a completely alien system to me, but it seems to be working for us. Among people I know from my background there seem to be a roughly equal division among those having outside tutors and tutoring at home. And the former is mainly for VR, again as breadandbutterfly said because English is not the language of our education.

Silibili maybe they don't admit that they use a tutor because they don't? What you sneered at earlier about children knowing to read words beginning with Q, well my child did that without being taught. I didn't even realise that she knew to read until she read me a three word sentence on a sign when we were out somewhere. And yes she was three at the time. I didn't realise there'd be paranoid people out there thinking I was furiously tutoring her at home, and wanting me to just come out and admit it.

silli i think parents choose tutoring for many mnay reasons.

Some because their DC are being failed by the system.
Some because they are unhappy with the standards provided by the system.
Some to addtess a particular issue that the system doesn't cover...

blisterpack, I am not going around asking mums if they tutor and then when they say no, I stamp my feet up and down repeating 'you do you do!'

But what gets my goat is the moral higher ground mothers take on tutoring, teaching anything using a pen and paper, siting down'. I 'teach/tutor' my child formally every morning for 15 mins. Be that reading a book or practicing writing. Rest of the day we spend freely. I gain much more in that 15 mins of focused learning than 24hrs of random learning. My child probably learns both ways. What I learn is how how much she has absorbed. What I need to focus with her on etcetc.

As for the 3 year old knowing her words beginning with q, I am surprised. I am surprised too that she can easily read books without ever being 'taught'.
My dd can also 'read' 3 letter words. Not by adsorption but I taught her what each individual sounds of the alphabet are. She is not fluent with 5 letter words. This will take practice and 'tutoring'!

:)

It didn't happen like that with my PFB, just DD2. I was very surprised too, especially to know that she could read and that I hadn't even realised. I think initially she was just remembering words by sight (we read a lot of books, so not only did she have books read to her from the time she was a baby, but of course she grew up watching DD1 reading to me and me reading to her too) as she'd know some very complex words but not some other easier ones.

And another thought. If reading is as easy as being read to, then why is there still a problem with literacy in the uk?

Where do people find the time for tutoring? Seriouse question. We struggle just to do home work after school. She doesn't even do loads of activities (just rainbows once a week and dance on a Saturday morning). By the time I get home they have a snack and get changed do school work, reading then out to play for half an hour while I cook dinner, eat, bath and bed. Am I just really unorganised?

housework, love ur username (saying this while I vacuum and mumsnet).

The people I do know who tutor do it once a week after school and on Saturdays.

But I do think that it is hard of both parents work full time to give a balance between tutoring and doing other activities. Maybe they sacrifice music or art or family time? Who knows. I am not at that stage to know yet. It also helps if u outsource cleaning I am sure!

We ran a recent piece of research which found that 28% of parents used private tuition. The split by year group was:

Use Private Tuition
Ages 5 to 7 - 30%
Ages 8 to 11 - 34%
Ages 12 to 14 - 29%
Ages 15 to 16 - 29%
Ages 17 to 18 - 23%

You can see the full report here: www.edplace.com/blog/?p=180