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....

We have tutored DS from year 4 to reinforce what he is learning at school in literacy and his tutor has done some adhoc maths sessions with him when he has needed some additional explanations. It is one hour a week plus an hours homework. He will be going to a top performing comprehensive which streams heavily from year 7 and which is full of children who have been to prep schools and as he hasn't had the grounding they have had I am not prepared for him to lose out simply because he hasn't had the same opportunities. Everyone round here is tutoring, we can afford it and I am not going to let him miss out by not playing the game so to speak.

No

My dcs go to a pretty bog-standard primary in London just about to start Y1 and Y3. I've been AMAZED at how many children are tutored and this is in Y1 and Y2. It's not necessarily the most aspirational parents hiring tutors either.

What? Why?
So you tutor your child to get them into a selective school...
They get in and then struggle all the way through because (frankly) they aren't bright enough and shouldn't really be there...(great for their self confidence!) or you carry on tutoring them through secondary ...so they get the right grades to get to university and then they struggle there too ...or what???

Ok I suppose if they go to a rubbish school and are competing directly with pupils from a good school...or are struggling just keeping up ....otherwise it is just cruel....

I want my children to be happy...they are bright enough and their schools are
good - they should be able to acheive good enough grades to have a choice of what they want to do with their lives....and as long as that pays for the lifestyle they want....fine by me
I don't want them to be geniuses doing a degree at Oxford when they are 10 - because that would limit their life choices!)

(I did notice when I was at another parent's house they had the same maths book that our children use at school -hmmm- so maybe they will be top of their primary class ...but then what?)

I maybe be completly off the mark here.

But I think we need to look beyond just the academic side and consider the selective schools and their alternatives in more detail.

so say selective grammer-small good facilities
large rough comprehensive low achievement and aspiration bullying ect..

I know its bit simplistic but its way of looking at it.

parents just want the best environment for their child not to be be genuis and go on to oxford.

All im saying is if you surveyed parents of selective schools and ask reasons for applying it would be about a lot more than exams if that makes sense and again depends on area and the alternative.

3state academies select 10%round here on

verbal reasoning-most state schools don't prepare kids for that kind of test

musical aptitude
languages

then its lottery and quota of postcodes.

all the indies have entrance tests and some sort of selection.
we have very successful indie sector as good state schools oversubscribed and no one wants to consider the alternative.

They may not take sats into consideration but as someone who was in near bottom sets in comp for few subjects it was dire behaviour was bad, teacher couldent control the naughty ones and people got picked on for being swotty.

so most parents sats alone would hope they in top to middle set.
I think the streaming at secondrys bit of shock to child after the cosyness and inclusiveness of primary being split from freinds as they did better than you.

We not super well off but most parents working class to middle class , perhaps not jeremy kyle fans want their kids to have opportunity to get on and maybe achieve more than they did as education should be a ladder up.

Other cultures like asia and india/pakistan pride education as most important thing . The news covered chinas school exams few months back sounded way more intense than our a levels and gcses.

I been doing more as trying to close the gaps in teaching at school. looked into tutoring but cost too much so we opted for online maths program and doing stuff ourselves.

But mines struggling so that,s reason dont want her falling behind and confidence and happyness falling as even at 6 they self aware what everyone else is doing.

I dont judge people for tutoring everyone has their reasons.,
we dont all have the very best school we work with what we have and do best we can.

I dont think its the norm but i do think a lot of secret parent tutoring goes on as i used to think ahh they learn it all at school as long as we do set homework.I dont think people mention it as dont wnat to be seen as pushy and want to give their kids advantage i base that on whos top of class in dds year and knowing their parents doesnt surprise me.

I think my freinds and family would consider me pushy so dont mention it.

my mam comes from school of go nearest crap school as cant be arsed for you do do anything different.

I think, on the whole, it is not the children who most "need" private tutoring who actually receive it, result being an ever widening gap between those at the top and those at the bottom.

I got DS2 (11) tutored all through Y6 in English as it was his weakness. The school identified 'a problem' when he got 3A in a QCA (is that what the non-SAT years SATS are called?!) at the start of Y5. Alarm bells rang, the school threw 10 hours of 1:1 tuition at him (not well targeted imho) and we paid a reasonable £28 for a private group thing, 1:4, for 1 hr 20 mins once a week plus homework.

He achieved a 4 overall in his English which we are all happy with. God knows how he would have done without the tutoring! And yes, I know we will have to keep it up in one way or another for the next 5 years to ensure he gets a 'C' in English GCSE if he is to stand a hope of getting an apprenticeship. As evidenced by this summer's debacle!

No tutoring here (Barnsley). There aren't any selective/grammar schools. Those with money send their children to Wakefield, those without send them to the local comp.

As I said, I think this thread is a bit patronising to those who pay tutors - when we nice well-educated middle class MN mums help our children academically all the time not just for an hour a week - we take them to museums, play intelligent games with them, read with them, discuss stuff with them,buy books for them etc etc. Not all kids grow up in homes like that. Tutoring is probably their best chance of levelling the playing field a little.

It even happens in very good Prep schools too where the teaching is already supposed to be designed to prepare children for 11+ exams. This is especially the case where DCs are going on to super selective Grammar or private schools.

breadandbutterfly - that may be the case, if it weren't for the fact that it is mainly well-educated, middle class mums who can afford and use tutors. The only children who were pulled out of one morning of a sports week my children did over the holidays were two children attending a local private school who apparently couldn't miss their weekly private maths tutoring.

I haven't hired tutors but I certainly would if I felt it necessary.
And I have certainly given my DC oodles of help over their primary years. So what's the difference really?

I'm wondering too why parents see academic work as so gruelling and somehting to be contained within school hours?

Surely some DC would find a one-to-one with a French speaker, say, a lot of fun?

The children missing out on a morning's tennis in the summer holidays didn't look like they thought it was fun . Telling your child they need the sessions in order to do well in life, or keep up with their class mates, or pass the 11 plus doesn't normally make children leap about with joy, even if they know it's good for them. I'm sure a good tutor can make the work interesting or enjoyable, though, as can a good parent. As for the reasoning of keeping academic work contained within school hours: if your school doesn't do languages, then I can see why you might want to do those outside of school hours, but theoretically your child ought to be doing enough maths and literacy within school hours not to need more of it - surely more variety in their life would be preferable???? Doing more of what you are already supposed to be doing in school just smacks of a waste of time somewhere in the child's day.

No grammars in our Borough (SW London) but I know some parents tutor for 7+ into local independent schools, which are pretty much all selective. That said, very few children now leave dds' state primary for indies - at least, after Reception age.

A few parents in dd1's Y4 class, including us, are getting a little tutoring because this particular year had a lot of disruption in Foundation/Y1 due to illness and maternity leave, with the result that a few of the girls tend to panic and be under confident with their maths, irrespective of ability/grades etc. I saw dd1 panicking and starting to not like maths, and realized there were a few gaps in her understanding - and I am not the person to remedy the situation. She's had about four tutorials, which (amazingly) she enjoys, and already is beaming about going back to school next week with her new found maths confidence. For me, this wasn't tutoring for achievement's sake, but for confidence's sake - if we hadn't been able to afford it, I'm sure we'd have found other ways, but its worked beautifully and is definitely short term.

Rabbit is right, too. There is a sort of paranoia that is highly infectious, and spreads fast amongst groups of parents round here...I imagine its linked to the state of the economy, at least in part

rabbitstew - the parents who I know who hired tutors for 11+ and also at younger ages were all themselves of a fairly low standard of education - the kind who couldn't have helped their kids themselves. The 11+ forum is swarming with parents who speak v poor English themselves,having come to the UK as immigrants, but want their children to do as well or better than children of English-speaking parents.

So whilst I am sure there are some private school parents who also tutor - presumably they are the kind of parents who value education enough to spend money on it, and they can afford tutoring - I doubt they are typical and are certainly not the only kind of parents who use tutors.

The sad thing, really, is that ultimately that kind of tutoring is never really going to be very effective - nothing like the impact that having wel-educated parents who provide stimulating conversation, reading matter and activities from todlerhood on, is going to have. You can't really achieve much in an hour a week with a tutor who barely knows you, however good the tutors are (and most aren't) - but you can't blame people for trying.

Certainly not uncommon for the kids at the (very academic) private school here to have tutors for 11+. But thats' because the school itself doesn't prepare students for it, whereas all the primary schools around here do.

Also strongly disagree with you that

"theoretically your child ought to be doing enough maths and literacy within school hours not to need more of it - surely more variety in their life would be preferable???? Doing more of what you are already supposed to be doing in school just smacks of a waste of time somewhere in the child's day. "

as it implies that school subjects are basically uninteresting and pointless and should only be studied when forced. I loved reading, creative writing etc as a child as does my d1; my dd2 loves nothing more than learning languages in her spare time and ds loves science. Why should they not explore these interests out of school? That seems a very narrow-minded view of both education and children.

@ rabbitstew

Another view from SW London - an awful lot of people round here tutor for 11+ entrance exams for private secondary schools which are hugely oversubscribed. The state primaries are excellent but they don't prepare children for entrance exams, where they will be taking tests alongside children who have been prepared for years at private prep schools. With maths in particular, there will be subject areas that they simply don't cover in time at primary school. In English they need to experience comprehensions that are far tougher than those that they are used to doing in class.

There will always be super bright children who get in to highly selective schools without tutoring, but there is also a huge group of bright children further towards the middle of the normal distribution curve who need some help to give them a better chance of exam success.

I am not at all in favour of hot-housing children as that does lead to a likelihood of forever struggling to keep up, but to an extent that's what a lot of prep schools do anyway.

Sorry rabbit but I find your idea that academic work should be contained within school hours decidedly odd.

DD just had none weeks summer holiday. She chose to spend five days of it on a language course.

Our children all have tutors and do holiday crash courses, where we feel that either the teaching/aspirations of their schools are below the levels we feel sufficient or because they want some extra help.

But I do let up over the summer holidays on the "basics". Our DCs' summer holidays are full on with educational experiences, but not pencil-and-paper classroom based ones. I am not in the business of raising nerds with no horizons or imagination.

Lesser ability children will need tutoring bright children don?t.

Sorry, wordfactory, but I find your idea that you think I think academic work should be confined to school hours decidedly odd. My children learn French and Italian outside of school (most of their relatives live in France, so that was my choice for them, but one of my ds's opted to learn Italian in addition). As I have already said twice on this thread, I can see the point in that, as many schools don't actually do this in school time and if they do, not to a very high level, so a child with an interest whose parents can afford it or teach the language themselves might well end up getting his wish... They also learn musical instruments and read and write in their spare time and choose to do activities which involve maths - in addition to keeping active and enjoying hobbies which are not academic. They don't need help with what they are already doing at school, though, or more practice at what they are already doing at school, and don't need to pass an 11 plus exam, and we don't need the help of a tutor. If I felt my children were struggling at school, I too would look for the help of a tutor if I couldn't help them myself, but I would feel a bit sad about that, as it would reduce the amount of time they have to do things which are not covered by school at all.

As I've already said on other threads before, I agree with breadandbutterfly's point of view that reasonably intelligent children of middle class, educated parents already have rather a lot of advantages in life without adding tutors to the mix. However, more and more such parents are nevertheless apparently using tutors to ensure 11 plus success, top sets success, etc, and feel that this is necessary. This motive is not the same as wishing to pass on a love of learning for learning's sake and I do think it is sad if this motive for learning is being passed on to children as the entire point of it all.

Love of learning for learning's sake is great, but it is vital for DCs to learn also that learning is about earning a living/supporting themselves/making informed life decisions (which are increasingly complex) when they are adults.