Rise of summer tuition, achievement gap inquiry and boys with special needs

More than a quarter of parents, who are concerned about the 'summer slide', plan to hire tutors for their children over the summer holidays. According to a survey of more than 1,000 parents, commissioned by online tutoring site www.themathsfactor.com, 27% of parents plan to hire tutors for their primary-age children.

Conversely, the survey also suggests that more than a third of parents were unaware that their child's learning may slip back during the long summer break.

However, most parents said that they plan to work with their children on some sort of learning activity during the six week summer break. Suggested activities include reading books (29%), making use of literacy and numeracy apps (14%), Sats revision (8%) and other online courses to keep their children's minds active (7%).

Read more about the summer tutoring survey on BBC News.

The Education Select Committee has launched an inquiry into the underachievement of white working-class children.

This inquiry follows the release of official Department for Education figures that show that by the age of five, only one in three boys from poorer backgrounds are meeting development targets.

Written submissions are requested across several areas including, the extent of white working class pupils' educational underachievement, whether the problem is significantly worse for white working class boys than girls and what role government can play in delivering improved educational outcomes for white working class pupils.

The deadline for written submissions is noon on 30 September.

Read more about the inquiry on Parliament UK.

Nearly one in four state school boys have some type of special education need. This is close to double the number of girls, according to recent figures released by the Department for Education.

Almost one in five pupils in England, across both private and state sectors, are said to have SEN. The government figures show that this accounts for almost 1.5 million children (18.7%), which is a slight decrease from last year's figure of 1.6 million.

The survey revealed a vast difference between boys and girls; 23.3% of boys were judged to have special educational needs, compared with 13.7% of girls.

Campaigners have placed the blame for this on a combination of poor teaching and the incorrect labelling of children.

Read the full report on the Department for Education website.

When it comes to perks of the job, more than half of teachers want financial support for additional training or further study, according to a survey about employee benefits.

Money for training was voted the number one benefit teachers look for when taking up a new job. However, just 14% of teachers stated that they currently received these types of financial and training benefits.

An interesting aspect of the survey showed a dividing line between new and experienced teachers. The majority of teachers (55%) with less than 10 years teaching experience said that financial support to train was a key factor when considering a new post. More than 42% of those surveyed, with more than 10 years experience, agreed with their less experienced colleagues.

The responses come from a recent survey of teachers, commissioned by recruitment consultancy Hays Education. The survey also found that the majority of teachers surveyed (70%) stated that they would like to see education employees receive private healthcare.

Read more about the survey results on the Hays Education website.

The School Direct system for recruiting new teachers could lead to a potential teacher shortage, according to chief executive of university think-tank Million+, Pam Tatlow.

When giving evidence to the Education Select Committee, Tatlow claimed the introduction of the School Direct system of recruitment could lead to as many as 3,000 fewer teachers trained than is needed.

Under the Department for Education's School Direct programme, 9,000 teacher training places were transferred from universities to schools in 2012-13. Schools are expected to recruit trainee teachers who would then start their training in September 2013. At the end of the summer term, it is estimated that just under half of these places (45%) were unfilled, with many specialist shortage subject trainee places unfilled.

Pam Tatlow said: "Rather than expand the programme, School Direct numbers should be reduced in 2014-15 and a national strategy agreed to bring some stability and common-sense back into the system."

Read more about Pam Tatlow's evidence on the Million+ website.

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Shorter holidays will stop private tuition widening the achievement gap

An interesting survey about tutoring has surfaced this week that raises some pertinent questions about the state of our schools and the practicalities of summer holidays.

Summer tutoring is on the rise according to an independent survey of 1,000 primary school parents, commissioned by www.themathsfactor.com. The research found that a significant number of parents were concerned about the 'summer slide' – when academic progress goes into reverse over the long holidays. Plus, 27% of parents surveyed stated that they have or will hire tutors so that their primary-age child can be "the best in class".

You can't blame these parents for being concerned, especially considering the noises coming from the Department of Education regarding the outdated nature of the long summer break and its negative impact on academic performance.

This survey focused on primary-age children but the results mirrored research from the Institute of Education which suggested that more than a quarter of students have tutoring before GCSE exams.

How does this reflect on our state schools? Is the summer tutoring boom a threat or worry? If we have a such a significant number of parents seeking tutors, does this show that children aren't learning enough in our classrooms? Possibly.

This isn't necessarily an indication that poor teaching is taking place in schools, however. In regards to primary education, it could just mean that, as we feel the impact of a baby-boom, class sizes have grown so much that it's becoming too difficult to reach academic targets – or worse still, not stretch students to exceed them.

So we can see that upper-middle class parents can send their children to a private school and middle-class parents can send theirs to a tutor. But where does this leave the parents who struggle to make ends meet? At the back of the line, that's where.

Children with working-class parents suffer because their parents don't have the financial means to mitigate the summer slide. These families are never going to be able to keep their children ahead of their peers because of the economic straightjacket they wear.

Michael Gove believes that this balance can be addressed through the reduction of school holidays and specifically the summer break. If it's true that the length of a school holiday leaves economically-deprived children at a disadvantage, then maybe Mr Gove is correct. We should try and do all we can to level the playing field for those who are faced with the undulating terrain of academic performance.

Many state schools are now offering enrichment activities that run over the summer break to help bridge the learning gap that appears over the summer. It might not be too long before we see US-style summer schools appearing across the state sector.

If we reduced the summer holiday to just four weeks then is the cost of two weeks less in the summer really too higher a price to pay for this balance to redressed? Most teachers who I speak to are receptive to the idea of a shorter summer break. I certainly would be willing to sacrifice two weeks during the summer if it meant that our students would have a more level playing field.

With a caveat that the two weeks lost are redistributed elsewhere on the school calendar. Sadly, our unions seem as truculent as always when approaching changes in policy.

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