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Private Tutors

by Max Bellamy

Pressure to ensure their children score well on standardized tests and grab a competitive edge, is spurring parents to hire private tutors. This trend has developed as a result of the intensifying competition in the job market. Students who are privately tutored have a better chance of getting into renowned colleges, thus gaining access to better job opportunities after graduation.

Parents are expected to spend $ 2.5 billion this coming school year on academic tutoring. The expenditure has grown 7 to 10 percent every year in the past three years, according to Eduventures Inc., a Boston-based market research and consulting company. The nationwide tutoring market has more than doubled in the past five years with about 10 to 12 percent of students expected to receive tutoring this year.

Private tutoring dates back to the days when emperors employed renowned philosophers to privately educate their children. Traditionally, private tutoring was provided to society's elite, ensuring that only the well off received the best education. Today, several middle-class families are enjoying the advantages of private tutoring and federal efforts are being made to make private tutoring accessible to the economically challenged.

Private tutoring does much more than merely assist a student who is having difficulty with a particular subject. It helps students with learning disabilities and assists children who have performed poorly on standardized tests. Research shows that a vast majority of students showed dramatic improvement after employing a private tutor. The few students who do not excel seem to be limited to those students who skipped tutoring sessions. Thus, from such research, it can be concluded that for private tutoring to be successful, students must attend all tutoring sessions.

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