4th April 2018 9:00
By Blue Tutors
A recent study has suggested that students receiving private tuition are much more likely to attend a grammar school or a selective school than those who don’t have a tutor. Reported on the Independent website, the research was carried out by UCL’s Institute of Education, and it found that 70% of students who were tutored secured a place at a grammar school, but that figure drops to 14% for students who had no extra tuition. The suggested solution is to tax families who pay for extra help, and use that money to help poorer students.
For every £100 increase in a family’s income, the chance of a child from that family winning a place at a grammar school rises by 6%. The government is trying to make more grammar school places available across the country to improve social mobility, but critics say that this won’t have the desired effect because those places will just be taken by students from affluent families. Professor John Jerrim, who wrote the study, said that “The government therefore needs to explain how they are going to level the playing field between different income groups.” He has called for a tax on those who use private tutors.
This news follows a separate study where 52% of parents said that they would like Ofsted to look into the amount of private tuition which takes place in different schools. The worry is that, if many students regularly see a tutor, it hides the standard of teaching within their school and inflates exam results.
Original article: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/parents-private-tutors-tax-grammar-school-places-children-entrance-tests-ucl-a8268406.html