Misunderstanding why people tutor their children

The latest horror to assail our civilisation is apparently the idea that parents might hire tutors for their children. No doubt it's the upper middle classes deploying their superior financial resources to make sure that their own special little snowflakes get ahead in the race to grasp the great big brass ring that status and position offer in our society.

In those circumstances, it matters that an ethnic divide is opening up.

Quite right: if those with an enhanced melanin content are being held back by the privileges going to the melanin deficient then this is indeed something we should act upon. Do something about even. Perhaps we should ban private tutorials? Or possibly even reform the education system itself so that none is needed?

We would go with that second option ourselves: all taxpayers cough up for the current publicly funded education system so, yes, all should benefit from the best it has to offer. Except there's one little wrinkle to this:

From the age of 11, as many as 22% of UK children are seeing tutors. But there is a big gap between, on the one hand white children (20%) and, on the other, black children (47%) and Chinese children (48%).

It is not those pinkish hued upper middle classes who are giving their snowflakes a leg up. Given the population distribution in the country, with ethnic minorities largely concentrated into the inner cities, it's actually the people suffering under the yoke of the inner city school systems that are attempting to make up for the deficiencies of those inner city school systems.

The answer thus is not to ban private tutoring but to set off more than a few rockets under those running the inner city school systems.

Although we agree, that's always an unlikely conclusion to a Guardian article....