Parents fork out £1.75bn on tutors for kids

PARENTS are spending an extraordinary £1.7billion a year on home tutors to teach their children.

A quarter of pupils are said to have extra lessons out of school, at an average cost of £34.22 an hour. But some so-called ‘supertutors’ are able to command far higher fees of up to £200 an hour.

Mandarin is the most expensive subject, with tutors costing an average of £53 a hour, followed by physics (£47.50) and chemistry (£45.80). The cheapest is history, at £32.

The figures come as campaigners call for the Government to provide tuition vouchers for poorer families to ‘level the playing field’. More than a third of children from affluent households have received extra academic help at some point, compared with 20 per cent from lower income homes.

Online platform Tutor House has also found that the cost of tutoring varies across the country, based on its own internal data.

The most expensive region is Hampshire, where lessons cost £39.56 an hour on average, followed by £39.01 in London and Surrey at £38.89. The cheapest area is Gloucestershire, where lessons average just £29.33, and Yorkshire is a little more expensive at £29.60 on average.

Alex Dyer, founder of Tutor House, said: ‘What many people do not consider is how much the cost of tuition can vary.

‘Like house prices, tuition costs more in the South of England. For thousands of students every year, private tuition is the difference between obtaining the results they want and being disappointed.’

All the figures are an estimate for the largely unregulated industry. Sir Peter Lampl, founder of educational charity the Sutton Trust, said: ‘Private tuition is a big and growing business. It’s clear there is a demand from parents who want to do as much as they can to support their children.

But he added: ‘The growing prevalence of private tuition has serious impacts on social mobility. To level the playing field, the Government should look at introducing a means-tested voucher scheme to enable low and moderate income families to provide tuition.’

Nearly a quarter of secondary school teachers have taken on private tutoring over the past two years.