14th August 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
A survey released this week my mathsfactor.com suggests that more than a quarter of parents in England will hire a tutor over the summer holidays to help prevent the “summer slide”, where pupils’ grades slip over the summer. The poll of 1,000 parents of children in primary school suggests that parent’s greatest worry is that long summer holidays will allow time for their children to forget the things they learnt over the last year. A fifth of the parents surveyed responded that they hire tutors over the summer to ensure that their child stays at the top of their class. Many more said that they would want their child to engage in some sort of educational activity over the summer holiday to prevent them from falling behind.
Research has shown that the worries of parents regarding summer holidays are legitimate. Students tested at the beginning and end of summer holidays tend to perform significantly less well at the end of summer holidays, unless they had access to learning opportunities and took part in educational activities. This may contribute to the gap in achievement between higher and lower income students, where lower income students do not have equal access to summer learning opportunities such as trips abroad, museums and home schooling. Of the parents surveyed, most were planning some sort of educational activity, many of which are low-cost and beneficial.
Reading aloud with young children is a low-cost and extremely effective way of boosting literacy skills for the new term, while for slightly older children, inexpensive mobile phone apps can be purchased which help with literacy and numeracy. Online tuition courses are a cheaper alternative to home tuition, and can help children keep their skills up with just a couple of hours a week. Many other parents will hire face to face tutors to come to their homes over the summer to ensure that their children do not fall behind at school. However, schools have warned that children need to time to rest and ‘be children’ over the summer holidays, pointing out that play itself is educational. Whilst a couple of hours of tuition can be beneficial, parents should allow their children a chance to relax before the new school year.