Exam pressure: What the private tutor saw

Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent

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01/04/2014

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Levels of exam angst will be steadily rising for many students. Their ordeal by exam paper is about to begin.
It's also the time when many families will be thinking about some last-minute assistance. They will be searching for the emergency breakdown service of the education world, the private tutor.

Tutoring is one of the great invisible forces in the education sector. It's difficult to measure its impact because it operates outside the formal, state-regulated education system.

But this "shadow education" is big business. In places such as South Korea and Hong Kong high proportions of pupils have private lessons. The most successful tutors have rock star status with glossy advertising campaigns.

It might not be fair, but tutoring is an inescapable feature of competitive education systems across the world. If there's a race for better grades, from London to Los Angeles, Moscow to Manila, someone will be offering private lessons.

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