On the whole, it’s not something we parents shout about, but one in four of us does it. Hiring private tutors for our children is now widespread.

“It’s expensive, but worth it,” says Ashan Sabri, whose daughter Zarreen, is having tuition in biology and chemistry in preparation for A-levels this summer. “My husband and I tried to tutor her at home, but we found all our knowledge was out of date and we were only confusing Zarreen. We also tried a group revision course but all the children were sitting in a room for different kinds of exams. On the whole, we think one-to-one tuition works best.”

The real reason is: does tutoring do any good?

“It’s not the magic bullet,” says Professor Judith Ireson, author of a 2005 Institute of Education report on the subject. “It’s still up to the child to do the learning. If he or she isn’t interested, sending them to a private tutor won’t do any good. However, we did find that students who had private tuition in mathematics during the two years before GCSE achieved on average just under half a grade higher than students who did not have a tutor.”

In which case, surely it’s time to break open the champagne? Not necessarily, says Elaine Tyrrell, head of The Rowans School, Wimbledon, a preparation school which regularly gets children into the best private schools.

“While we recommend private tutoring for a few children whose first language isn’t English, we don’t encourage it for the others. With the level of education they get here, children really ought to be able to pass the entrance exams without any extra teaching. And our worry is that they might just get used to getting help from last-minute tutoring, but, once they actually get to that school, they won’t be able to cope.”

But Mylene Curtis, owner of Fleet Tutors, one of the biggest tutoring agencies in the country, holds a different view.

“In some respects, the hurdles children have to leap in order to get into these schools are set at a higher level than the reality,” says Curtis. “We often find that, once a child has got into a school, the standard of work isn’t as high as was feared. The trick is to do well enough in the exam to win a place.”

小题1:What does Ashan Sabri think of the group revision course?

A．It’s expensive but worthwhile because it works the best.

B．It confuses students because the knowledge taught in it is out of date.

C．It isn’t effective because it doesn’t focus on specific exams.

D．It is effective because it doesn’t focus on specific exams.小题2: What do the underlined words “magic bullet” in Paragraph 4 mean?

A．Something that cannot help to solve problems at all.

B．Something that solves a difficult problem in an easy way.

C．Something that seems useful but has no use at all.

D．Something that encourages interest in study.小题3:According to Elaine Tyrrell, private tutoring is _______.

A．effective in language learning but not for exams

B．effective for foreign students but not for local students

C．unnecessary in most cases and may harm the further study of students

D．unnecessary in secondary school but helpful to further study小题4: What can be inferred from the last two paragraphs?

A．Fleet Tutors and the Rowans School are competitors.

B．Entrance exams to schools are too difficult for most students.

C．Further study isn’t as difficult as was first thought.

D．Private tuition is worth the financial investment.小题5:What attitude does the author hold towards home tutoring?

A．Critical

B．Objective

C．Supportive

D．Uninterested