UK Edition
Why twice as many ethnic minority parents are proud to pay for private tutors
Middle class parents are increasingly fierce when it comes to their children’s schooling, report after report has highlighted, pushing with all their might to make sure their offspring get first dibs on whatever educational opportunities are available. Among their favoured strategies, according to new research published last week by the Sutton Trust, is forking out for what it labels a “shadow” army of private tutors, especially in the run-up to crucial public examinations, with nearly a third of children now having private tuition outside school, and wealthier pupils twice as likely to benefit from such extra help as their poorer classmates.
But in Extra Time, the Sutton Trust’s study of a private tuition industry now worth an estimated £2 billion per annum, the social mobility think-tank suggests ability to pay is not necessarily the determining factor in who gets tutored and who doesn’t. Some sections of the population, it reports, regardless of their financial circumstances, are more prepared than others to go the extra mile and shell out the £20-£30 an hour that the average tutor charges. Over half (56 per cent) of pupils from immigrant backgrounds have private tuition compared to just a quarter of their white classmates.
Pupils like Tamanna Miah, whose Bangladeshi-born parents made big financial sacrifices in order to pay for private tuition so that their daughter, who came to live in Kent when she was six months old, could be the first in either of their families to go to university. Now 24, she is studying media, communications and politics and governnance at Canterbury Christ Church University.
“My dad owned his own restaurant and my mother is a volunteer[Tamanna is the oldest of 5 children]. We always had the basics we needed, but we’ve never been on holiday, had few family days out, and there were no expensive games consoles. Any spare money went on tutoring. What’s more I can’t ever remember resenting it. An education is for life, whereas a holiday is just a holiday.”
Tamanna is aware she sounds old for her years, but believes her approach to education is shaped by an attitude she inherited from her parents. Both her parents had very little education, and her mother is still more comfortable speaking Bengali than English.
“They prize education because they didn’t get the chance of it. So we never had any embarrassment about having tutors. It was for us a positive thing.”
When she was nine, Tamanna recalls going back to live in Bangladesh for a while, where she was sent to a fee-paying school. “It was slate-like chalk boards, no displays, no technology. If you really want to know why I value education so much, it was because I spent time in that school in Bangladesh. Seeing what it lacked taught me what a huge privilege education is. Most people here just don’t seem to realise that.”
The Sutton Trust’s conclusions about the willingness of high numbers of Asian parents to dig deep into their pockets to pay for private tuition is borne out in the experience Dr Pragya Agarwal. A researcher at Liverpool University,she also tutors schoolchildren in maths and sciences at her home in Formby in Lancashire.
“I grew up in India where a very high value is placed on education. And for those Indians now living in this country, the mind-set is that, if you want your children to go to the best schools, or the best university, so that they can get on in life, then they are going to need extra help. Education comes first in what you spend your money on.”
Which is what 40-year-old Pragya did with her own daughter, Prishita, now 19, a talented violinist now studying biological anthropology at Cambridge. “I realised that her state-funded school wasn’t able to support her supplementary needs. If she was going to do really well, she was going to have to learn beyond the curriculum. Because her school just didn’t have the resources, she would need tutoring.”
In some subjects, Pragya – a graduate in architecture who came from Delhi to Nottingham as a young woman to study for a PhD – did the extra teaching herself, but in others, such as French, she cut back on other household expenditure to pay for a tutor. “My parents had made sacrifices for my education. They were determined all three of their daughters should go into the professions. It was natural that I should do the same for my daughter.”
She is puzzled by the attitude of many white parents who expect their local hard-pressed state school to take full responsibility for their children’s education. And she can’t understand those mums and dads who do resort to a tutor, but try to keep it secret, or are embarrassed by what they are doing. “They seem to feel that tutoring gives an unfair advantage, or that it’s for the rich to train students for Oxbridge interviews and tests, but a distinction should be made. Yes, there are people like these but there is also tutoring for families who do not have the advantage of having parents who are educated, or a school that supports a high level of attainment. All my students have been the ones who were unmotivated because of the way the subject was being taught at school and hence under-achieving.”
Around 30 per cent of the parents who turn to Nathaniel McCullagh, of the London-based agency Simply Learning Tuition, come from minority ethnic backgrounds, he says, and of those a sizeable proportion make big sacrifices to foot the bill.
“They do it willingly because they know that education is the best route to social mobility. Unlike white families, they don’t have other things to fall back on when it comes to their children’s future, no old school tie, or connections, and they are also aware of the prejudice that you can still face because of the colour of your skin. So they see getting the good grades that get your into a good university and a good profession as the only way they can help their children achieve status.”
It is a belief that can lead to refreshingly direct conversations, he reports. “We have a number of Chinese clients, for instance, who have no liberal angst about getting a private tutor for their children. They look at it very much in terms of cost-benefit.” Research quoted in the Sutton Trust report estimates that one-to-one private tuition can equate to a child making as much as five months’ progress, with particularly strong benefits for those who are falling behind in class.
“For them,” continues McCullagh, “it is the most efficient way of helping your children and they have no qualms about talking about how much they are spending.” Likewise, Pragya Agarwal has noticed Indian parents feel no inhibitions sharing, even boasting, about their children doing well in their education. “They don’t understand why they should feel bad or shy about it”.
The term “tutoring”, of course, covers a wide variety of options, and at the other end of the spectrum is the New Age After School Club, with two branches in north London. Most of the families who use it to help their 7- to 16-year-old children improve their educational performance come from the Ethiopian and Eritrean community. Its tutors teach in small groups to reduce the cost to as little as £7.50 per hour, and tailor individual timetables around what parents can afford.
“When I came to England, I expected the schools in a country that once ruled the world to be much better than those in Ethiopia,” says founder Ensermu Workneh. “Don’t get me wrong. In Ethiopia, parents think education is important. High school graduates are common, and it is in our blood to give a good education to our children, even if we don’t have much money. But Ethiopia is a poor country and that is reflected in its schools.”
However, he found an approach to learning in the UK which meant that, once his daughter had overcome the language barrier, she wasn’t being stretched. “The teachers would tell me, ‘don’t worry, she’s on top table’, but she’d only get a single sheet of homework every week. It wasn’t enough. I felt very frustrated, and many of the parents who bring their children to our after-school clubs are frustrated. They want the best, not just good enough, but they just don’t know enough about how the system works with its key stages and exams. So they feel as if they are in limbo.”
Perhaps it comes down to different levels of expectation – among both parents and their children. Pragya Agarwal remembers how her daughter would work until the early hours of the morning to finish a piece of school work to the best standard she could. “That is what I would have done when I was her age, but my British husband would worry that she should working too hard. ‘Don’t you feel guilty?’ I remember him asking. I didn’t.”