Tutoring during the holidays at Prep school

[Workingmum1234]

Do those of you with a DS at boarding prep school use tutors during the Christmas/Easter/Summer holidays?My son is in year 5 and we are hoping for Eton he told me during the half term that the boys do lots of work during the holidays.He reads a lot and I do some work with him but I honestly thought tutors wouldn't be necessary at this stage.

Good grief no!

(That said, I should confess that we do have a system for keeping languages and maths ticking over: Duolingo, Quizlet, Alcumus. DS does a few minutes of each most days in the holidays in return for being allowed plenty of gaming time.)

We have done Duolingo which he loves but I hadn't heard of the others.I feel they work so hard at school at this age but he will be going for pretesting next year so I don't want to miss out.Congratulations to your DS for getting a place for 2017, I presume.

You shouldn't need to tutor for Eton unless you are going to try for the KS. We didn't, although in retrospect we might have done something about maths, which was a bit of a problem. In my opinion you are paying the school to prepare them for their next schools, and the kids need downtime in the holidays. If you are happy with his progress you would do just as well getting him out doing other things in the holidays.

I have to say that some parents seem to be addicted to tutoring even after their sons get to Eton. One boy of DS knows apparently spent virtually the entire Easter holidays before GCSEs at a crammer. He got a few extra A*s.

Thanks! Fwiw DS reckoned that the gaming he did was more helpful for the pretest than any school work - really, it doesn't need preparation. Now CE/KS is another matter...