27th May 2016 1:00
By Blue Tutors
A recent study by Manchester University has revealed that trainee teachers from the north of England are regularly instructed to tone down their accents in the classroom. Many teachers have been told that their accents are not ‘posh’ enough for the classroom, with some teachers being told that they can’t teach phonics to primary school children. While there has been an outcry in the national press about the discrimination faced by teachers, it occurred to me that discrimination faced by private tutors is still an issue that nobody talks about. What kinds of prejudice do tutors face, and do they have any recourse?
The simple answers to those questions are a) many different kinds and b) not really. While trainee teachers can raise complaints and use a variety of different mechanisms to stand up for their rights, private tutors have very few options to fight discrimination where they feel they have experienced it. Further, many private tutors are not even aware of the prejudices that underpin many parent’s requests for tutors. It is extremely common for parents to request a tutor of one gender or the other, or an older or younger tutor, to request tutors from independent rather than state schools and to request Oxbridge tutors only. Less common but still happens is parents requesting tutors ‘born in the UK’, or ‘having gone to school in the UK’. How can tutors and agencies identify and address discrimination?
In the private tuition industry there are certain things that tutors have to live with if they want to get by in the industry. Parents cannot be forced to hire someone they don’t want to, for any reason. Very often parents say that their children would feel more comfortable with a tutor of the same sex, and many tutors can understand that and accept that it is parent’s prerogative to decide this. Other questions are more complicated. What if parents come to an agency and say that they will only accept a tutor who has been independently schooled because that would make them feel more comfortable? What if they said they would prefer a tutor of a particular ethnicity, or religion?
At the end of the day, parents have the right to decide who they do and don’t want to tutor their children. However, that doesn’t mean that tutors or tuition agencies should support these decisions where they feel that they are being discriminatory. Just as parents have the right to decide, agencies also have the right to say that they cannot accommodate a particular request, and should ensure that they uphold their values when accepting requests from clients.