Better parents versus better private tutors: what can parents do to help their children succeed in school?
If you’re a parent considering to hire a private tutor in order to make an impact on your child’s achievements in school, you must read this report recently released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (or O.E.C.D.), which is called “what can parents do to help their children succeed in school?”
You see, every 3 years, the OECD conducts several exams as part of their Program for International Student Assessment (or PISA), which tests 15-year-old kids in the world’s leading industrialized countries on their ability to use what they’ve learned in science and math to solve real problems and also on their reading comprehension — i.e. skills which are normally associated with success in school (and life in general).
What’s so remarkable about these recent studies is the fact that they reveal that parents more focused on their children’s education can also make a dramatic impact in a student’s achievement. Surely the role that tutors and teachers play are critical… But in the current battle of increased global economic competitiveness that’s taking place worldwide, it’s the new role of parents that’s the surprising element in these recent studies.
The PISA team published the 3 main findings of their recent study, and they are as follows:
- 15-year-old students whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school show markedly higher scores in PISA tests than students whose parents read with them infrequently or none at all;
- the performance advantage among students whose parents read to them in their early school years is evident regardless of the family’s socio-economic background; and
- parents’ engagement with their 15-year-old kids is strongly associated with better performance in PISA tests.
Surely private tutoring services can have a major impact on your child’s achievements in school. But simply asking your kid how was their school day and revealing a genuine interest in the learning that they are going through in school, can have the same impact as private tutoring lessons.
This recent PISA study also found out (see page 3) that on average, the score point difference in reading that’s associated with parental involvement is largest when parents read a book with their child, and when they tell stories to their children, and when they talk about things they’ve done during the day. However, the score point difference is smallest when parental involvement takes the form of simply playing with their child.
In short, parental actions that support your child’s learning at home are most likely to have an impact on their academic achievement at school. What’s not that important in terms of parental involvement are other actions such as parents attending school board meetings, volunteering in classrooms, or simply participating in fund-raising events.
Probably the tutors that will exert the greatest impact on the development of critical skills for ensuring the success of your child in their life are reading tutors, foreign language tutors and science tutors. Check here our pre-selection of outstanding private tutors that’ll help your child to be successful in school – and life in general.
But before you consider to hire any of those outstanding private tutors we’ve pre-selected for you above, please remember that there’s no substitute for a good tutor. But don’t place the whole burden on them. Active parental involvement in a child’s education can make every private tutor much more effective.
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