27th June 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
A recent article in the New York Times has reported on the state of extra tuition among students attending private schools in the New York area. It suggests that more than half of all parents now hire a tutor as a matter of course to ensure that their children get the A grades, apparently required, to succeed academically. The worrying message in the article is that the parents are at odds with the schools their children attend, which insist that their students don’t need the extra tutoring, and actively discourage it.
One mother, whose son attends Riverdale Country School in the Bronx, said that she spent $35,000 this year on private tuition, just short of Riverdale’s £38,800 tuition. Last year she said that the figure on tutoring for her son actually hit the $100,000 mark. The mother didn’t give her name because Riverdale are unhappy when they discover that a student is receiving extra tuition, and even more so when they find that a parent has spoken to the press about it.
There is another reason for remaining anonymous when discussing your child’s tutors, and that’s that many believe it to be a indication of a struggling student, which can knock the student’s confidence. This is a common argument put forward from the expensive private schools for why they don’t want students to seek out a private tutor, and the misalignment with many parents’ ideas has led to what many call ‘stealth tutoring’, where students and their parents do everything to ensure that the school doesn’t find out how much extra help they’re receiving.
The schools in New York are understandably trying to control the amount of private tuition that takes place, for fear that they’re seen as failing the students they teach, and have even consulted the tuition agencies themselves to try and work together in partnership. However, most schools requests are for the tutors to stop giving students the vital information that sets them ahead of their non-tutored classmates, but as long as parents are paying so much for this precise service, it’s difficult to see how the agencies and schools can come to a compromise.