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....

wordfactory - I think in many cases, the reason parents get tutors is down to lack of confidence in their own or the school's abilities, as mindosa said. I don't see how you can say that is being patronising in some way, it is just stating a fact. Clearly, if parents didn't believe tutors could impart something beyond what the child was getting at school or could get at home, they wouldn't spend the money.

Thanks breadandbutterfly (mentally taking note of the tips....).....now just need to somehow not make this into another battleground with DD.

To give another perspective, one of my friend has decided to leave tutoring to a paid tutor, as she didn't want the stress and constant battles over homework/extra work any more and just wants to spend quality time with her dd doing fun things like eating ice-cream.

No.
mindosa said these parents are insecure. Her assertion was very much that these parents are being stupid...hence the 'FGS'.

Perhaps these parents are actually correct and that their DC are struggling and that their schools are not up to snuff. Not insecurity, just acknowledgement of the true situation.

And frankly, when did tutoring your own DC as opposed to buying help become morally superior? I mean there are oodles of things I could do myself but I don't.

It's quite simply a manifestation of the complacancy/arrogance mentioned earlier.

'Oh FFS, anyone with half a brain can do it...forced yawn...'

Word Very few posters gave children struggling as reasons and when they elaborated most were concerned about getting them into second levels schools.

If your primary school is not good then parents should be able to fill in the gaps, likewise if they are struggling. Its primary level for gods sake, its fairly basic stuff.

Come on Wordfactory, you have to admit that tutoring at primary level is mainly the domain of overly involved helicopter parents. Sure there are some exceptions but when does the whole 'doing the best for your children' thing end. Is enroling them in mandarin at 3, violin at 2, tennis at 3 the way forward? Must all DC's be uber competitive robots drilled within an inch of their lives?

breadandbutter, if you refrain from your daily mail type remarks and sweeping generalisation on class etc you may build some confidence in today's teachers. If you end up calling people an idiot as you are not able to have a coherent view nor put a succinct argument forward, I really wonder how is the real idiot here!

Also wordfactory - the ultimate in complacency is deciding to buy your way out of a problem. My DC isnt reading at the level I would like - well then I will buy a tutor.
That is not the same as my car needs washing, I will ask the guy at the supermarket to do it.
Its lazy parenting.

I have no idea why people tutor at primary stage. I expect each parent has their own reason and story.

I haven't found it necessary but I certainly won't mock or look down on those that do. Especially as my own DC attend fabuolous schools (with very rigorous academic standards) and DH and I do shit loads of stuff with them.

So parents who tutor are now not only idiots they are lazy lesser parents.

Could you really be any more patronising if you tried?

Well, my idiotic lazy lesser parenting has bought DD all sorts of useful skills and she seems to be doing nicely. So I'll just beat myself up a bit more and carry on writing the cheques

Bonsoir. Are you lazy and idiotic enough to do random cheques to random tutors...can I have some please?

TBH, I'd much rather write a single gigantic cheque to the sort of school wordfactory's DCs attend. But France doesn't make schools like that, so I shall have to carry on running around Paris like a mad woman taking DD to classes being an idiotic lazy lesser parent and writing multiple smaller cheques.

Unfortunately for you, sugarbeach, I am very careful indeed about the tutors I choose. Makes up for being idiotic, lazy and lesser

wordfactory - for me,the moral issue is that I dislike the idea of grammar school places going to the child with the richest parents who can pay for the best tutors, rather than the brightest children. That seems not what the system was set up for.

That is not the same as saying that it is immoral to get a tutor full stop, if, for example, your child is struggling. As in the case of kids with non-native parents, as I argued above, you could see it as actually attempting to right the balance and ensure that bright kids with parents who didn't speak English at home could achieve what they were capable of.

My main beef with tutors though is not a moral one. It is a practical one. There are loads of poor tutors out there; you need no qualifications to be a tutor. The stakes are high and parents are ripe for the plucking. I think the industry is large snake-oil salesmen by another name.

Parents,on the other hand, have only their child's interest at heart and know their child's abilities better than anyone. They know when their child is not bothering, when they are really stumped... It would take weeks or months for a tutor to get those sorts of insights into a child. I

I haven't had any of the experiences described on this thread with tutors. We use an agency that we find is highly reliable, knows our children and our family (and our very high standards) well, we constantly exchange information about what we are looking for and find the tutors are excellent at addressing our issues as well as identifying room for improvement in specific areas.

silibili - this will be my last comment on this or with you as you appear to be too hung up on issues of class to be able to debate rationally.

I am probably very similar to you - we are both children of immigrants, both from families that started in this country with little and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. Yet you seem to see me as coming from an entirely different, privileged class compared to you, and misinterpret my comments through a prism of jealousy and bitterness that mystifies me. Without knowing you, I don't know why you have these complexes - I hope sincerely that you develop a bit more self-confidence and appreciate the good fortune you enjoy and the achievements you have attained.

Until such time, as I've said, please refrain from attacking others on the grounds that you think they enjoy privileges you imagine you lack. Your life sounds every bit as 'middle class' as mine, in fact you say so much yourself. There is nothing wrong in being middle class and it was MN rather than the Mail that was my point of reference in my comments about middle class parents. MN does tend towards being middle-class, esp those who bother to read threads on tutoring! so I hardly think I was being terribly reactionary in referring to the benefits that parents reading the thread could and do confer on their children WITHOUT getting a tutor.

Anyway, back to topic...

Why is lazy parenting paying for your child to be helped by a professional?

If I send my child to ballet classes is that lazy as well? Or should I just learn ballet so that they could learn from me?

What a bonkers attitude.

Besides there are zillions of reasons why parents tutor; they may not have the time, inclination, education etc to do it. How can you put it all down to laziness. If they were truly lazy they would just not bother no?

Bonsoir, I am sure there are some good tutors out there. And certainly, the older the children get, the more likely it is that parents will not be able to handle the higher levels across a range of subjects. And specialist tutors may have more of a role.

But are you really saying you could not reach the desired level to help your primary-aged child?? Surely most parents can manage that...

I think I too will have to find a random tutor playing on my insecurities to teach my child something she has not learnt as she is from the working class and therefore Does not get to count enough pebbles or go to
Museums. I have Not got any books in my council house to read. Oh, but wait! I can't get a tutor even with my saved benefits as my English is not good enough to write a cheque, being an immigrant. And my morals, oh I would not even go there!

People get tutors for all reasons under the sun as someone earlier stated. I am not going to judge them. But I am surely going to try and do whatever needs doing to ensure my children are not disadvantaged in any way. I am also going to ensure my hard earned money is not wasted. Nor am
I going to actively create a nerd who knows nothing but books/studies.
Gosh, parenting is hard!

I am not trained in the techniques my daughter's primary school teacher tutor is trained in, no, and I don't have at my fingertips the hundreds of former pupils against whom she can benchmark her progress and measure gaps in her knowledge. I am more than able to help my DD complete the pretty extensive homework her tutor sets her, of course.

Bonsoir - But it takes time and skill (that not all have) for tutors to measure your child's ability accurately; I'd be v surprised if you don't know this better than any tutor. If your dc gets an answer wrong, you know immediately if it's because they weren't paying any attention or whether they were doing their best but really struggle with basic maths skills - this is not immediately bleeding obvious to a tutor in the way it would be to you.

Maybe it's because I'm a teacher i don't imagine teachers have some unique 'magic' - yes, they cover the subjects every day but frankly, at primary level, the subjects aren't very complex and most parents could master everything required without much difficulty on their part. Whe it came to teaching my dd, I'd forgotten stuff about angles of triangles or differences between a rhombus and a parallelogram, say, etc etc as I hardly use them every day - but it takes literally minutes to remind oneslf.

I wonder if mindosa is more right than you would like to admit that lack of confidence is an issue here.

No you are quite wrong. I am perfectly confident in my abilities and much better educated than my DD's tutor, but I do not possess the same skill set that my DD's tutor possesses that enables her to plug gaps that I don't see (and her class teachers most certainly don't).

I had absolutely no clue about phonics when DD started to learn to read (though I know an awful lot more about it now, having seen her learn to read in two languages) and was very grateful for a tutor who did.

I'm sure the gaps would be as obvious to you as they are to her tutor if you spent the same amount of time with your dd focusing on the things your tutor does.

Obviously, you may not wish to spend your time doing that; personally, I really enjoyed the time I spent with my dd doing 11+ prep, as did she - and I know that no tutor could have achieved the same results with anything like the same economies of time let alone money - because I knew what she knew, how she thinks, what she likes/dislikes, could be to the point in a way a tutor couldn't (for fear of being rude), knew what would motivate her and could then apply it... No tutor could match that.

I would recommend everyone to do the same - esp re picking up on the soft skills as I mentioned earlier, which are what really matters and which are readily transferable. I was shocked at what her teachers had let her get away with... really.

More than that, it was great for my relationship with my dd - really recommend it for that alone.

Getting a really excellent tutor may help academically; your dc may appreciate the cash you've spent and the priority you've made their education. But it's hardly the same as one-to-one time with your own dc...

oooh breadandbutter I want to agree but am so, so scared. I may go back to primary teaching instead of the towers of academia it sounds a lot more fun !!!