Greg Hurst reported for the Times on this year’s Sutton Trust/Ipsos Mori private tuition poll

More than two in every five children in London have received help from a private tutor, which is twice the rate among pupils in the rest of the country.

Private tutoring has become more common for schoolchildren in the capital, rising to 44 per cent from 34 per cent a decade ago, according to a survey.

More than half of the children with a tutor said it was to help to prepare for a specific test, such as a school entrance test, or for an examination, although a similar proportion said it was to help with school work in general.

The survey, of 2,488 children aged between 11 and 16 in England and Wales, was commissioned from Ipsos Mori by the Sutton Trust, an educational charity, which said that children from poor families who could not afford a tutor were missing out.

Read his full report here (£)