Private tutoring at transition points in the English education system: its nature, extent and purpose

had 4 terms or more (15% and 16% respectively). Similarly in English, 39% had tutoring for
up to three terms while 13% had 4 terms or more. A substantial proportion of students had
received tutoring before starting their GCSE courses in year 10, ranging from 26% in French
to 56% in humanities (Table 5).

Table 5. Duration of tutoring received by year 11 students (percentages)

Family background and the prevalence of tutoring

Relations between the employment of tutors and students’ family background were examined
using information on socio-economic status and ethnicity. Two indicators of socio-economic
status were available: DfES data sets provided individual pupils’ eligibility for free school
meals and information on parents’ education was gathered from the student questionnaires.

Of the pupils eligible for free school meals, 19% had ever had a tutor, as compared with 28%
of pupils who were not eligible (χ² = 15.2, df = 2, p <.001). In light of these findings, analysis
of variance was used to compare the extent of private tuition in the three year groups, when

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