Tutoring, educational inequality and a failing school system

Emily Graetz reflects on her time as a tutor and asks us to reconsider education in Australia. 

For many families, tutoring seems to be the golden solution to their problems. Given it is flexible, easy to negotiate on and provides access to students with lived experience of the educational system it’s no surprise that employment websites, noticeboards and community newsletters are stacked with ads for tutors, companies and families seeking an educational partnership. My experience of tutoring has largely been fulfilling, but as I work with more and more students in Sydney, I’m beginning to realise that it isn’t the equaliser I thought it to be. 

It’s hard to get an accurate picture on the number of tutors in Australia. In 2020, The Australian Financial review reported that 1 in 7 students will receive tutoring during school - more so in urban centres. The industry is also worth billions of dollars. But considering it’s largely unregulated and many tutors, particularly those being paid cash-in-hand, won’t report their income to the ATO, we don’t really know the extent of the tutoring market. Regardless, an increasing number of students and educators are involved. 

By and large, my experience as a tutor has been positive - and I hope that it has been for the people I work with too. I’ve developed meaningful relationships with some clever and creative kids, supported families through challenging times and offered assistance to students who are otherwise neglected by mainstream schooling methods. 

Tutoring is so often a response to an education system that disregards the complex and multiple ways in which kids learn and as a way to provide support to students with learning disabilities and difficulties. I feel proud to have watched my students grow in confidence and courage and to know that they have an opportunity to flourish in ways they can’t at school.

At the same time, I’m more and more conscious that tutoring is a result of educational inequality. In my experience in Sydney, nearly all of the homes I have worked in have water views and from a couple, I have gazed out onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It takes a lot of money to own that kind of land. Many of the students also attend private schools with tuition fees of up to $30,000 a year. 

If tutoring is only afforded to the kids who have rich parents (lessons can cost anywhere up to $100/hr), the kids that really need help are still left out - first by an underfunded public education system with inadequate support, and secondly by a private tutoring industry they just can’t financially access. The reality is, students that are tutored will often succeed in life without extra support - they already have the financial capital to do so. 

This isn’t to say that all families are misguided. Many parents seek out tutoring with the best intentions and it may be the advantage they need for their kids to achieve private school scholarships or entrance into competitive selective schools. If anything, tutoring is an indictment on a failing public education system. Families are faced with out of date and inadequate teaching methods and curriculums and public schools are desperately underfunded. Meanwhile, the Australian Humans Rights Commission found that ‘insufficient provision of funds is the biggest issue in providing equal access to education for students with disability’. It should be up our governments to provide more comprehensive care and support for struggling students - not parents and tutors. 

Tutoring is only a temporary band-aid and does nothing to address real inequality for low SES families, kids with disabilities and for those in regional and rural areas lacking resources. If future generations of students are to reap the benefits of a well-rounded schooling experience we need to stop prioritising a privatised and exclusive tutoring industry and seriously engage with our education system on a structural level.