The tuition industry is growing rapidly in Britain, doing great work in improving numeracy and literacy and also aiding social mobility and aspiration. As former Marlborough headmaster Edward Gould said, the bigger the fence, the more ladders parents will use to get their children over the top.
At the expensive end of the spectrum, oligarchs prep their children to within an inch of their lives over the three months before they take the Common Entrance. Consultants such as Bonas MacFarlane make it their business to shoehorn these children into schools the parents had never heard of 12 months before. Alternatively, there are the prep school parents who in the holidays quietly pull out their little black book of young Oxbridge students and pay them to give Johnny a boost and propel him to the top of the pile.
Less privileged parents are also looking beyond school for education.
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