14th July 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
It seems as though no matter which country you look at, or parent you ask, private tuition is on the increase. We’ve recently published a few articles on countries trying to curb the amount of tuition taking place, and every week there’s another story about an afterschool centre opening to help struggling students. The question is: why is this the case? Has the teaching in schools got worse? Is it due to the increased competitiveness to succeed? Or has private tuition become more popular independently from these other reasons?
It is difficult for us to give any conclusive reason for the tuition boom. Most of the students we deal with have already decided to get a tutor, so our perspective might be slightly skewed. Something that is clear, is that employing a tutor conjures up opinions in people, some positive, and some not, and the stigma of private tuition being a refuge for middle class unintelligent students does still exist in the UK. However, perhaps due to global influences, particularly China, Japan and Korea, where having a tutor is almost expected, the negative opinions are becoming less commonplace, and it’s rare now for anyone to be reluctant to admit that they have a tutor. In fact, the most common reason we hear for a student not wishing to tell their friends about their tutor, is because they don’t want anyone else to have the same advantage.
This notion of competing with one’s friends might be the most significant cause for the rising trend for tutoring. In the UK the number of students applying to university has increased year upon year, and is now estimated to be 75% of all students finishing their A level, or equivalent, exams. Obviously when taking these exams, every student is judged relative to the whole country, not just compared to their friends, but there is a strong sense that education has become a competition, and just has diet and lifestyle has become so prevalent with advances in sporting competition, so private has increased, and is seen as an advancement in educational competition.
As for schools, of course they’ve changed, but whether that’s for the better or not is a debate that will probably last forever. It appears that basic English and Maths skills have declined, but that’s probably countered by increasing IT and technological skills, and many schools are moving towards teaching using media that young people today are familiar with. Class sizes may have increased to some extent, but 20 years ago it wasn’t 5 students for each teacher, it was many more, and that difference probably doesn’t explain why so many students would choose a one-to-one tutor.
All this suggests that competitiveness is the predominant reason for the increase in tutoring the UK, but in the US and Japan it is as competitive as it has always been, and private tuition is still on the rise. Of course, it may be simply that the need and want for a tutor hasn’t changed at all, but people just identify it now as a realistic proposition, whereas 20 years ago they wouldn’t have. Added to this, one can now find a tutor at the click of a button. Ease and cost of sourcing a good tutor might go a long way to explaining the current trend.