雅思听力场景训练

Private education is becoming more egalitarian

民办教育变得越来越平等

WHEN Charlotte Hobbs decided to teach her 11-year-old pupil about the “imaginary” maths needed to work out the square root of a negativenumber, she knew it would be a stretch. But her ambition paid off: the girl quickly masteredthe concept and now hopes to study maths at university. Most remarkably, Ms Hobbs achievedher feat in a foster home, not a west London Victorian terrace.

当夏洛特·霍布斯决定教她11岁的学生用来计算负数平方根的虚数时，她知道这是一个艰巨的任务。但她的抱负最终得以实现：这个女孩很快掌握了概念并希望在大学学习数学专业。最值得注意的是，霍布斯女士是在一个寄养家庭取得了这样的成就，而不是在伦敦西部的维多利亚式露台。

Private tuition has long been popular with the rich. A gaggle of London-based firms hire newgraduates from Oxford and Cambridge who charge ￡70-￡100 an hour to prepare children forindependent-school entrance exams taken at 11 or 13. Yet thanks to ambitious parents andgovernment policies, many more children from lower-income families are being tutored.

私人补习一直受到富人的欢迎。一些总部位于伦敦的公司聘请刚从牛津、剑桥毕业的学生帮助11岁或13岁的孩子准备私立学校入学考试，他们每小时收费70到100英镑。然而，由于那些望子成龙的父母和政府的政策，更多低收入家庭的孩子也开始补习。

The primary force is the pupil premium, a scheme that channels extra money to schools withpoorer pupils. This payment, which is rising from ￡623 ($950) per pupil this year to ￡900 in2014, has created a market for private tuition in state schools. Ms Hobbs works for Tutor Trust,a not-for-profit organisation which provides one-to-one sessions for ￡18 an hour. The firm’s 220tutors tend to be students at Manchester University keen to earn some extra cash. SinceFebruary 2012 they have taught for more than 10,000 hours in schools across the city.According to figures from Ofsted, the education regulator, two-fifths of schools are using theirpupil-premium cash to pay for one-on-one tuition; a third are using it for group tuition. The aimis to improve results and shrink the yawning gap between the academic achievements of poorchildren and richer ones in England’s schools.

这一现象最主要的动力来自学生奖学金计划，这个计划把额外的钱拨给贫困学子。这笔款项将从今年的623英镑（约合950美元）在2014年涨到900英镑，这也为在公立学校提供私人补习创造了市场。霍布斯女士为“Tutor Trust”工作，这个非营利组织提供每小时18英镑的一对一辅导。公司的220名老师大多是曼彻斯特大学想要赚点外快的学生。从2012年2月开始，他们已经在这个城市教授超过10000小时的课程。根据教育主管机构Ofsted的数据，五分之二的学校用学生奖学金支付一对一辅导费用；三分之一用此支付集体辅导费用。这项计划的目的是要提高教学成果并减少英国学校贫富学生之间学业成绩的鸿沟。

But it is not just the hardest-up who are getting private help: parents on ordinary incomes arehiring more tutors, too. Explore Learning, a private-tuition chain, says that many of itscustomers use government child-care vouchers (which are tax-free) to pay for tuition. Lowerearners receiving tax credits can claim back up to 70% of the cost. It helps that franchises suchas Kumon, a Japanese firm, lower costs for parents by teaching in groups. These kinds of out-of-hours outfits have long been popular in East Asia: roughly three-quarters of South Koreanstudents attend a hagwon after school.

对于接受私人补习的人来说，补习费不是最大的障碍：工薪阶层的父母也聘请很多辅导老师。一个名为Explore Learning的私人连锁教育机构声称他们许多客户都使用政府托儿券（免税）来支付学费。中低收入者的税收抵免能返还70%的费用。一些像日本Kumon这样的特许公司提供的集体教学也帮家长减少了费用。这种课后补习机构在东亚一直很流行：粗略计算，四分之三的韩国学生放学后都要参加补习班。

This combination of rising subsidies and fiercer competition means that the army of tutors islikely to get bigger. This should be welcome news. The Education Endowment Foundation, acharity, estimates that a year of one-to-one tuition is equivalent to five additional months ofschooling. Tutors are particularly valuable for difficult subjects such as maths. Thegovernment’s aim—to ensure that more of England’s poorer children reach their potential—isstill an aspiration. If its policies break the link between tutoring and income, it may yetbecome fact.

增加的补贴以及激烈的竞争意味着辅导老师队伍将会进一步壮大。这将是一个可喜的消息。一个慈善机构—教育养老基金会估计一年一对一辅导相当于五个月的学校教育。对于像数学一样十分困难的科目来说，辅导老师就显得特别有价值。政府的目标是确保更多英国的贫困儿童的潜能得到发掘，但这只是个仍未的抱负。如果政策能打破辅导和收入之间的关联，这个目标也许能成为现实。