25th November 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
For a long time private tuition was seen a luxury, only available to middle and upper class families – a supplement to a public school education. However, this point of view is becoming blurred, as many more families whose children attend state schools realise that hiring a home tutor isn’t out of their reach.
It’s a common question asked by many tutors when they first apply to Blue Tutors: “I suppose that many of your students are attending the top public/private schools in the area, right?” As soon as tutors begin they quickly realise that the students requesting a tutor are from a broad range of economic and cultural backgrounds.
The chancellor recently announced the education budget for 2011, and forgetting the amount reserved for tertiary education (degrees and vocational courses after students leave school), it’s roughly £70 billion. At today’s prices, and making a few reasonable assumptions about population and working age, that means that the average person will contribute approximately £85,000 to the education budget of the UK in their lifetime (£170,000 for two parents).
Now, assuming that the average family has 2 children, taking the academic year to be 40 years, and taking the number of years that someone is a school student to be 14 years, this means that two parents are contributing roughly £160 per week for a single child to attend primary and secondary school in the UK.
If we consider the cost of a tutor for one hour is £20-£25, it really does put the cost of private tuition into context. Paying for education is generally seen as an extravagance because of the misconception that our education is free, but in reality, hiring a private tutor for one hour a week is only increasing the amount you spend on education by 10-15%. This figure is even less significant when you consider that the majority of parents only hire a tutor for the 20 weeks before a student’s GCSE exams and before their A-level exams. According to our figures this will cost £800, but that’s less than 0.5% of the amount that those parents will contribute to the rest of their child’s education.
At Blue Tutors we don’t like to think about education in economic terms, and we’re acutely aware that even with the above statistics, £20 a week is a lot of money for many families to find. However, we’re keen to publicise the fact that private tuition shouldn’t be placed alongside sportscars and swimming pools as a luxury good. In fact, the cost of hiring a tutor, compared to the amount we pay anyway for education through taxes, is not as significant as many people think, and it arguably provides much better value.