A private affair

Spectator, The, Jul 6, 2002 by Johnson, Rachel

The Guardian calls it a national scandal, but even top Labour figures are doing it. Rachel Johnson on the amazing ubiquity of private tuition

MY eight-year-old daughter attends a Church of England primary school in Notting Hill. It is a cracking good school, and she is very happy there. My younger son also goes to what some of my middle-class friends term `Free School', and I have to admit to some feelings of righteous smugness that (1) we are saving many thousands of education pounds a year, and that (2) we are in the teeny-tiny minority of parents in my part of Notting Hill to use the state system.

That said, my daughter has started seeing a private tutor for an hour a week to help with her maths, which is as bad as mine was at her age. I know that if she is to get into anywhere pacy at 11, she will need a leg-up on the maths front.

I have a further confession to make. Not only will my eight-year-old daughter start seeing a nice lady up the road (we were very lucky to get a slot) who last year helped a girl I know win a place at hushed tones - St Paul's, but I also once hired a chap to help my son with his homework.

Yes, I paid 20 per hour of good money for Will to steer my son through long division and making Viking longships out of egg cartons, because these are essential skills that I happen not to possess. I should add that my elder son attends a top private prep school in Hampstead, so it is not only those of us whose children attend state schools who are inflating demand for the country's fastest-growing service; it is also those whose children are privately educated - and how!

I mention this so that you know where I am coming from. It is perhaps no surprise to learn that I am one of the many, many parents who have resorted to top-up private lessons. But I know that it will come as more of a surprise to hear that the Blair boys have received private tuition in Alevel history and other subjects to supplement their full-time education at the London Oratory, a selective Catholic comprehensive in Fulham.

One or possibly more young male teachers at league-table-busting Westminster School in Dean's Yard, a cricket ball's throw away from Downing Street, have been traipsing in and out of the family flat, where Cherie keeps them supplied with attention-stimulating cups of coffee. It is a private arrangement between the handful of tutors concerned and the family. A Downing Street spokesman issued The Spectator with a statement: `The Blairs' children are entitled to carry out their schooling free from intrusion, and any issues relating to their education are entirely a matter for the family.'

I am sure to attract vilification for having broken the omerta surrounding the Blair children, but there are good reasons for spilling these beans. Where, and now how, politicians' children are educated has always been of public interest, legitimately or otherwise. I don't want to be too partypolitical about this, but it was only a few days ago that Robin Cook, standing in for Mr Blair at Prime Minister's Questions, tore a strip off IDS for sending `his children to Eton' and accused him of not touching any state school with a bargepole. In fact, only one Duncan Smith goes to Eton, and all four were educated at a Roman Catholic state school.

Whatever. But there will be many, I know, who will argue that the Blairs are trying to have their cake and eat it. They are dutifully putting their children through the state system, but they are effectively garnishing this education with private lessons after school. And not just from the legion of tutors available in the Yellow Pages, but from first-class teachers at Westminster, aka the Great School, alma mater of six prime ministers, the philosopher John Locke, and, er, Tony Benn. As the Good Schools Guide puts it, the `famous designer-label central London boys' school'.

But I won't carp, and I know that many more will share my solidarity. It's up to people to educate their children as they please. Why should they be subject to the doctrinaire requirement that the offspring of Labour party top brass receive their education entirely at the hands of the state? Presumably, the Blairs are only acting in extremis and exactly as do many other parents, who are concerned that their children are falling behind/need an extra push to move on to the next stage.

My daughter's tutor told me of the incredible but necessary dedication' of one of her clients, a clerk in a bank, who lives in Brixton and whose bright daughter attends a rough comprehensive. Every week after work, she would bring her daughter by bus from Brixton to Notting Hill, so that she could receive an hour's lesson. The mother's determination and drive, like Cherie's, is admirable. The snag in this case is, of course, that the Blairs are not white-collar workers from Brixton; they are our First Family, and their natural concern for their children has proved keener than their political smarts.

For this country's two-tier educational system has caused some of the bitterest feuds in that party. Remember the hoo-ha over Harriet Harman's children? It is also widely thought that Lord Falconer, Blair's chum, was denied the chance to fight a safe seat because he insisted that his four children attend private schools.