PARENTS of one in four state school children are hiring private tutors to boost their exam results and get them into the best grammar schools and universities.

In some secondary schools as many as 60% of pupils are being tutored at home as parents attempt to make up for shortcomings in the state education system.

The figures are the result of research by the Institute of Education at London University, which found that overall 27% of pupils are being privately tutored.

Separately, it is claimed that some parents are paying for five or six tutors a week — at a cost of up to £8,000 a year — to help their children get the grades required by elite universities.

Until now there has not been accurate information on the extent of private tuition. Judy Ireson, the researcher who carried out the study of 3,000 pupils aged 10, 15 and 17 in a national cross-section, believes the study will not be welcomed by ministers — who claim that better exam grades are the result of extra spending on schools.

She argues that some schools’ results may have been boosted by the work of private tutors.

“It could make school league tables confusing for parents, because the results may not be down to the work of the teachers,” she said.

One private tutor, who did not wish to be named, agreed. “The whole league table thing is dishonest,” she said. “I see the local school boasting about its results and yet I tutor half its pupils.”

Tutors, who do not have to be qualified, can charge anything up to £50 an hour. However one, who did not want to be identified, said he had worked for a wealthy family who paid out between £200 and £250 a week on tutors for their daughter.

“It was difficult to fit into her timetable. I taught her maths and science and others taught her Spanish, English, history and music.

“She ended up with 11 A-star GCSEs. When she applies for Oxford and Cambridge her forms will show that she was educated at a comprehensive,” he said.

The research also provides evidence of the maths crisis in schools. Most tutoring was in maths, followed by English. Almost 19% of 15-year-olds were receiving tuition in maths in the hope that they would obtain the key C grade or better at GCSE.

Tutors say they see the impact of poor maths teaching. One said: “It is a shambles. I get 15-year-olds who have never been taught the multiplication tables. They don’t have the core base level of knowledge.”

At one school 65% of A-level students were being tutored. A third of the children surveyed said they did not have a tutor only because it was too expensive.

The findings will reignite the controversy over whether cabinet ministers have manipulated the system by sending their children to state schools, but paid for them to have private tuition.

Tony Blair was accused of hypocrisy when it emerged that his two sons, Euan and Nicholas, were attending the London Oratory — a state Catholic school — and had been receiving private tuition in history and French from masters at Westminster, one of Britain’s leading independent schools. Euan failed to get into Oxford, but did get a place to study history at Bristol. Nicholas is about to go to Oxford.

Margaret Hodge, the minister for children, sent her children to state schools in Camden, north London — but paid for them to receive private tuition.

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