Will tutoring generally help my child's education to people only use them to "coach" their children to get artifically high exam results

[bargainmad]

My son is nearly 10 and is in year 5. He has a young fairly newly qualified teacher and I don't think he has made that much progress this year. He had the same teacher in years 3 and 4 and he said he was doing well and should be heading towards a level 5 in his SATS in year 6.

I think the primary he is at are just happy for children to pass although when he is in year 6 he will get booster lessons. He is still at the stage of getting simple guided worksheets for homework. He has never ever been asked to write an essay or do a comprehension.

If he is capable I would like him to get into one of the top 2 sets in secondary (he will probably go to a fairly good State one).

I know a lot of children can do better with extra help but schools haven't got the time. My question is if my son was tutored now would this only help him to get an "artifically" high mark in his SATS or would it improve his education generally?

And would parents generally use tutors for only 11 plus and private school entrance exams?

You can ask a tutor to focus on whatever you want.

When ds was preparing for private school entrance test we didn't get a tutor. He had to do papers in verbal reasoning, maths and english. He did some VR papers to get used to the format - I expect this helped on the day, but gave him no long term benefit at all. His maths is very good, so no need to work on that, but I thought his English was relatively weak, so I bought a workbook on grammar & punctuation from Smiths and we worked through it with him. His English is really good now - & that's been really useful for him in nearly all his subjects. So if you do get a tutor, that might be something to work on that will give long term benefits (or just do it yourself as we did), rather than specifically cramming for SATs.

dd1 had a tutor once a week in year 1 to help with her reading and phonetic understanding

it was very good and she learnt a lot

I went into WH Smith the other week and it is mindboggling the amount of work books they have for children now. I just didn't know which to choose.

My friend said her son's teacher recommend the CGP series when he was in year 6 - has anyone used these with their child before?

Agree bargainmad the choice is huge. I spent ages thumbing through lots but finally settled on one that targeted the specific issues I wanted ds to improve on. If you're looking for something more general then others may be able to give recommendations, but I do seem to remember hearing CGP recommended before as well.