Time to review the place of the tutoring industry in education.
Parenting and Tutoring
As parents we are hard-wired to give our offspring the best possible opportunities in life. Most of us find it counter-intuitive to allow our children to fail – especially when it comes to education. So, it is not surprising that many parents look to supplement what is taking place in school by engaging tutors to provide extra lessons and support.
We don’t get much training in parenting. Despite the plethora of advice out there, we have to work it out for ourselves. At some time or another we all face a crisis moment when we question if we are doing a good job.
Because of this it is easy for parents feel duty bound (and often against their better judgment) to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ in the tutoring ‘arms race’ – they don’t want to be seen as disadvantaging their children by not providing tutorial support when others in their peer group are doing so.
As well intentioned as this is, parents need to weigh up the undoubted benefits that tutoring can bring in terms of improving educational and life opportunities, against the impact that it has on children.
My experience from running a school in Hong Kong, arguably the tutoring capital of the world, was of a constituency of children burnt out from lives packed with a range of before- and after-school academic and extra-curricular tutoring.
Here the UK we are in danger of heading down the same route. Rather than spending their summer between Years 5 and 6 enjoying their childhood playing sport and climbing trees, many are subjected to a daily diet of Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning past papers, in order to ‘prep’ for 11+ entrance examinations.
Schools and the Tutoring Industry: An uneasy relationship
Historically there is an understandable antipathy between schools and the tutoring industry. For the school there is often an implied criticism that the school’s provision is not up to scratch; whilst it is in the interest of the tutor to talk down the school’s provision to justify the need for tutoring.
When the results are in, the exam passed and the school place awarded, who can take the credit? Was it down to the school or the tutor? Ultimately neither will ever know. Tutors are skilled in ‘managing expectations’ of parents so that they can take credit for success and can distance themselves from failure. Who would blame them? Their business is usually founded on word of mouth.
But that relationship is changing.
Tutoring the most effective educational model
It is difficult for those of us working in schools to admit that there might be a better way than the established model of classroom teaching, but research has long shown that one-to-one tutoring is the most effective model of education.
Figure 1 Bloom's Achievement Distribution graphs
Back in 1984, Benjamin Bloom, the Professor of Education at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University published research[1] that compared three types of learning environment: the ‘conventional’ classroom of one teacher to 30 students; a ‘mastery learning’ environment of one teacher to 30 students, and a ‘tutorial’ model of one teacher to one student.
Bloom found that the tutorial model has far superior outcomes both in terms of the level of attainment and that there was a much narrower range of distribution across the test group.
Understandably, Bloom chose to focus on ‘mastery learning’, dismissing the tutorial, one-to-one model as ‘too costly for most societies to bear on a large scale’, which remains true to this day.
These findings have more recently been supported by research from the Education Endowment Foundation which found that,
‘On average, one to one tuition is very effective at improving pupil outcomes. One to one tuition might be an effective strategy for providing targeted support for pupils that are identified as having low prior attainment or are struggling in particular areas.’[2]
Private Tutoring – Shadow Schooling
Tutoring has traditionally served two main markets:
1. Tutoring for examinations. Tutoring is a by-product of high-stakes examinations, be they school entrance examinations at 7+/8+ or 11+; or public examinations at 16 and 18. As a consequence tutoring has become an industry. Parents see tutoring as an investment in their child’s future to gain access to the school or university of their choice.
2. Tutoring supporting students who are struggling: Children can struggle and get behind at school for a number of reasons: students develop at different rates; there can be a SEN need for additional support; they may have missed a period of work due to illness or relocating from another country; the child might be unmotivated or lazy; or there may be deficiencies in the teaching provided by the school. In these cases, it is tempting for parents to resort to tutoring.
Tutoring is not a marginal activity. The Sutton Trust Report in 2016[3] estimated that about a quarter of 11-16 year olds had had tutoring at some point in their educational journey and estimated that the tutoring industry in England and Wales was worth £1bn to £2bn. It is likely that, post-Covid, the proportion buying into tutoring and its value as an industry are both much higher.
Tutoring moving to the mainstream
The past few years have seen tutoring moving into the mainstream in both the state and independent sectors.
The State Sector
Tutoring has been central to the Government’s response to the lost learning from Covid, with the introduction of the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) and 16-19 Tuition Fund delivering tutoring at an unprecedented scale.
The Department for Education statistics estimate that 5,324,213 tutoring courses have been started by pupils through the NTP so far since it started in November 2020 and reports that 50.1% of state schools have participated in the National Tutoring Programme in the 2023-24 academic year.[4]
According to the recently published DFE Tutoring: guidance for education settings (May 2024), schools should consider their overall tutoring strategy, and any potential barriers to implementation in their setting.
‘Tutoring should form part of a wider approach to boost attainment in your setting. It is also important to engage and involve staff to support the effective implementation of tutoring.’
The Independent Sector
One development that is breaking down the traditional antipathy between independent schools and the private tutoring industry is that independent schools have begun to turn to tutoring agencies to provide specialist teaching which the school cannot provide.
The challenges of the teacher recruitment crisis and pressures on school budgets has seen independent schools, including some of the great names, out-sourcing some of their specialist Oxbridge preparation and even A-level tuition in subjects which are no longer cost-effective for the school to provide. For example, one independent school is currently offering A-level Computing delivered remotely by tutors provided by a tutoring agency.
Faced with the prospect of VAT on school fees and the consequent need to cut costs, some independent schools are actively exploring remote tutoring as a way to keep minority subjects which are no longer cost-effective, such as German and Latin A-level, on their curriculum. Tutoring agencies, such as Keystone Tutors, are tailoring their offering to support schools by providing tutors who will teach at times which fit with the school timetable and reporting schedules, and even will take part in online parent-teacher meetings.
A new approach to tutoring
Given that tutoring seems to playing an ever greater part in the UK educational landscape, it is vital that schools, parents and the tutoring industry work together for the good of the young people in our care.
This new approach should have two important aspects.
1. Alignment
Tutoring is most effective when tutors reinforce and support what is going on in school, it makes sense for schools and tutors to work together for the good of the child. Rather than operating as competitors, tutors need to be brought into more formal partnerships where schools recommend those tutors whose methods and approach aligns with that found in the classroom.
‘Tuition is more likely to make an impact if it is additional to and explicitly linked with normal lessons.’ The Education Endowment Foundation
For this to happen it is vital that the support provided by the tutor aligns with the schemes of work, methods and techniques being taught in the school. Often tutors have their own approaches which run contrary to that of the school, with the end result of the child becoming even more confused. (I have even encountered tutors who taught totally different topics on the syllabus from those being taught by the school and, sadly, have witnessed students missing their university offers because they answered questions on topics introduced by their tutor.)
The issue of consistency of approach is particularly important in the case of children with a Special Educational Need (SEN). Schools will have an Individual Learning Plan (ILP) in place for students with SEN. It is particularly important that any tutor supporting a student with SEN follows the ILP and his/her contributions support the methods and approach given by the school, rather than employing an alternative one.
2. Regulation
Is remarkable in 2024 that the world of private tutoring remains unregulated.
Private tutors are not required to be registered or approved by any statutory organisation; they do not have to be qualified teachers and are not subject to standard safeguarding requirements such as having an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).
Whilst tutors who are employed by schools are subject to the same standard levels of safeguarding checks as other teachers, there no statutory requirements for private tutors, who often working one-to-one with children.
At present, parents have to undertake their own vetting of potential tutors. Some councils (e.g. Suffolk Safeguarding Partnership) are helpful in offering advice to parents on how to go about doing this:
Always interview the tutor or coach
Ask to see personal references and confirm their authenticity by contacting the referees directly
Ask to see their original qualification certificates and be satisfied they are recognised and authentic
Ask to see their CV and employment record. If there are career gaps, ask reasons and seek evidence of any explanations offered
If the tutor is a qualified teacher, ask to see a copy of the tutors Teaching Agency Registration and a copy of their DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check
If the tutor has recently been or is currently employed in a school, speak to the Headteacher for a reference
It is also helpful for the tutor or coach and you and your child to meet prior to you making a decision
If the tutor is a freelance or works as a supply teacher, ask to see their DBS
However, no parent has the resources available to vet a private tutor to the standard required to work in a school. Because of this, the DfE should establish a central register of tutors who meet the same standards in terms of qualifications and safeguarding required to teach in a school. The aim of this register would be to provide parents with reliably verified information on which they could make decisions about the suitability of potential tutors.
This approach is supported by The Tutors’ Association (TTA), a voluntary organisation which was founded in 2013 which represents 50,000 tutors, and provides a DBS vetting service for its members.
References
[1] Benjamin S. Bloom, ‘The 2 Sigma Problem: The Search for Methods of Group Instruction as effective as One-to-One Tutoring’, Educational Researcher, Vo.13, No. 6. (Jun. – Jul. 1984), pp.4-16 available online at https://www.jstor.org/stable/1175554
[2] https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit/one-to-one-tuition accessed 27/05/2024
[3] Kirby, Phillip Shadow Schooling: Private Tutoring and Social Mobility in the UK, The Sutton Trust, 2016 available at https://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Shadow-Schooling-formatted-report_FINAL.pdf
[4] https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/national-tutoring-programme/2023-24 accessed 27/05/2024