16th March 2016 1:00
By Blue Tutors
Research funded by the Nuffield Foundation has revealed a sharp rise in private tuition amongst some minority ethnic groups in the UK. Children from Chinese, Black and Indian backgrounds are more than twice as likely to receive private tuition than their white peers. The foundation’s study also showed that children from these ethnic groups complete more homework on average than their white peers. The findings are being linked to the significant improvement in results amongst minority ethnic children in the UK.
Researchers on the project drawn from Newcastle University and the National Centre for Social Research are studying a group of 19,000 children born in 2000-2001 in order to investigate how they spend their time out of school. At age seven, five percent of children were receiving private tuition, with the figure rising to twenty-two percent at age 11. Researchers examined the data taking pupil’s ethnic backgrounds into account, and noted that of those receiving private tuition at age 7, those from Indian backgrounds were most likely to have a tutor. The figures revealed that of those who receive tuition at age 7, twenty percent were from Indian backgrounds, whilst just three percent were from white backgrounds. At secondary school level, Chinese pupils were most likely to receive private tuition with 48% of students from this background receiving private tuition, compared with 20% of white children.
The Nuffield research suggests that school league tables which are in large part based on students’ results, may be heavily influenced by tuition which takes place outside of school. This is particularly relevant in the case of ethnic minority students, who, according to the data, are far more likely to receive private tuition at home. The foundation noted that the department for education has made much of the fact that the performance of ethnic minority students has improved, and pointed out that the trend may have more to do with private tuition than with schools. Their report concluded that while the figures suggest private tuition is common amongst pupils from various ethnic minority backgrounds, they do not tell us why parents from ethnic minority backgrounds are more likely to seek private tuition for their students, and called for further research.