Is Tutoring Acceptable?

This is a question that troubles many parents. Schools make comments to parents about not having tuition, overloading children, leaving it to them and so on. We recognise that schools try to warn parents not to be taken in by terrifying anecdotes about how much tutoring is required to get into the top schools and we would agree with that concern, but the bottom line is that most children have some sort of tutoring before their exams.

The idea that school alone can do the job may well be desirable in an ideal world but the fact remains that some parents will always engage additional support for their children whether it is tennis coaches or anything else and tutoring falls into that bracket.

This leaves parents who don’t tutor their children at a disadvantage because the exams are incredibly competitive and few children fall into the natural genius category. Whatever schools may say, most children have some form of additional support before they take exams. Parents can also be secretive about the extent to which they have had their child tutored so the best thing to do is to decide for yourself what level of additional preparation would make your child feel a little more comfortable going into their exams.

We do not agree with huge amounts of tuition to try to get unsuitable candidates into overly academic schools – that will benefit nobody, least of all the child concerned. However it seems increasingly the case that parents who ‘follow the rules’ find themselves suddenly discovering that everyone else has been having tuition and their child has missed out.