When a £180,000 Tutoring Job Goes Viral
My timeline, and just about every newspaper in the UK, has been buzzing with reports about a new tutoring job advertised by Tutors International. The story has sparked headlines not so much because of the salary, £180,000 a year, but because of the student: a one-year-old boy.
While that level of pay isn’t unheard of in the world of private education, and for a well-off family not necessarily an extraordinary expense, what stood out to me was the parents’ reasoning. They explained that their older son had started formal tutoring at five but later felt it had been “too late”. Their decision to begin earlier this time speaks volumes about the intensity and ambition that can drive educational choices at the highest levels.
What really captured my attention, though, was another detail in the advert: the family’s aspiration for their child to grow up ‘bicultural’. That idea struck a chord with me because it’s something about which I know a little, both professionally and personally, and it raises some fascinating questions about how identity and education intersect from the very earliest years.
Understanding the Bicultural Aspiration
In many ways, I’m almost the kind of person that family might hope their son will one day become. At my core, I am profoundly bicultural. I came to the UK when I was seven, and over the years I was fortunate to attend two of the country’s best schools. I later went on to study at Cambridge, where I was the first person born in mainland China to be elected to the position of Treasurer of the Cambridge Union Society and Vice-Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association. These positions, in many respects, reflect not only the hallmarks of a well-educated young British gentleman but also a path often taken by those who went on to hold some of the highest offices in the land.
Along the way, I experienced many of the quintessentially British moments that families like this one aspire to give their children. I’ve watched The Ashes at Lord’s, cheered England on at Twickenham, and watched tennis from the Members’ Box at Wimbledon. I even gave rowing a try, not especially successfully, during my time at Cambridge. Over the years, I’ve joined old private members’ clubs, attended events in the Houses of Parliament, and even dined with a Prime Minister. My old colleagues from when I worked in finance would sometimes tease me for sounding “posh”, which I take as a sign that I’ve assimilated well into British life.
Yet beneath all that, another part of me remains entirely unchanged. I still speak Sichuanese, my local dialect, and when I go home, I eat the same food I loved as a child. That duality defines me, and it’s why I so deeply understand the aspiration behind wanting a child to grow up bicultural. It’s a dream shared by many immigrant families, one that I recognise intimately.
Through my work over the past few years, I’ve seen many students and families pursuing that same goal at different stages of their lives. In fact, one of my students at Oxford told me recently, with great pride, that he had joined the University Polo Club because he saw it as a way to “understand British culture better”. It’s moments like that which remind me that biculturalism isn’t just an academic idea; it’s something lived, felt, and nurtured.
Why This Approach Might Miss the Point
Having seen the advert and reflected on it and my experiences, I must say that in my view, this might not be the best way to achieve what the family hopes to achieve. The idea that one individual can serve as a living vessel of “Britishness”, someone who can somehow transplant the qualities of a British gentleman onto a one-year-old child, strikes me as idealistic and unrealistic.
To begin with, there are several distinct goals at play. Becoming a British gentleman is not simply a matter of attending the right schools or universities. Through my own personal experience and my work with students, I’ve seen first-hand that securing offers from such institutions is an intensely academic journey. The exams and interviews that students face, from the age of six or seven all the way through to eighteen, are remarkably challenging. Even now, when I look at scholarship papers for schools like Eton or Westminster, I sometimes find the questions daunting myself.
So the notion that a single tutor could single-handedly shape a child’s academic, cultural, and cultural development seems implausible. As the old adage goes, it takes a village to raise a child. Achieving those goals requires a team of specialists: tutors for music, English, mathematics, and critical thinking, each bringing expertise in their respective fields. Expecting one person, however talented, to cover all of that is unrealistic.
It’s also worth noting that the advert reportedly attracted applications from headteachers. I’ve worked closely with headteachers in my capacity as a school governor, and I know that very few of them teach regularly anymore. Their focus today is on operations, leadership, and pastoral oversight, not day-to-day teaching. Personally, I would not choose to have my children taught by someone who has long since stepped away from the classroom.
If I were approached with a similar request, my advice would be quite different. The family doesn’t need a full-time tutor; they need an educational advisor. Someone who can help the parents understand how to guide their child’s learning journey, not replace them in it. Especially at such a young age, the most powerful and formative influences are the parents themselves. In my experience, children who maintain strong bonds and communication with their parents tend to thrive academically, emotionally, and socially.
Given that this family has already achieved financial security, I would argue that there is no greater investment they can make than to be actively involved in their child’s early education. What they need is not a tutor who takes care of everything, but rather a trusted advisor who can help them become confident educators in their own right.
Culture Cannot Be Taught by One Person
When it comes to culture, I can say with certainty that I did not acquire my sense of Britishness from any one individual. I absorbed it from the people around me, classmates, teachers, friends, and the broader environment in which I lived. To expect a single person to serve as the source of an entire culture is unrealistic. As a child grows and begins to attend school, and later university, their worldview and identity are shaped by countless influences. Culture, after all, is lived, not taught.
Even something as simple as my accent illustrates this. When I first lived in Exeter, I spoke with a West Country lilt. After moving to Manchester, I picked up a Mancunian accent. Later, while studying in London, a hint of Cockney crept in. It was only at Cambridge, while running for elected office in student societies, that I consciously refined my speech to sound more formal. My accent evolved as my environment did. That fluidity is, in many ways, the essence of cultural assimilation: it is organic, adaptive, and ongoing.
Expecting a one-year-old to absorb culture from a single tutor, no matter how accomplished, ignores this reality. Culture seeps in over years, through countless interactions, experiences, and choices. I didn’t start at one, and neither did the many bicultural individuals I know who have successfully bridged two worlds. To suggest that earlier necessarily means better is, I think, a fallacy.
I also found myself wondering why the parents felt their older son had started too late. Was it perhaps because he didn’t gain entry to a particular school? If so, I would gently suggest that such outcomes are not always a matter of timing or even of failure. Sometimes, it’s simply that a school isn’t the right fit for a child, and the focus should be on finding an environment that matches the child’s personality, rather than pursuing a particular name.
If I ever had the opportunity to speak with this family, I would share that perspective openly. In my experience, having a quintessentially British tutor from infancy will not automatically produce the outcome they desire. I never had such a figure, and yet I have been fortunate enough to live many of the experiences they aspire for their son. The truth is, cultural identity cannot be imposed from the outside; it must be chosen, and it must come from within.
As educators and parents, our role is to guide, not to dictate, to create the conditions in which curiosity, empathy, and adaptability can flourish. Many children born into British families, surrounded by all the trappings of that culture, still grow up to be something entirely different. That, if anything, proves that the process of becoming bicultural, or indeed, becoming oneself, is something that must be lived into, not engineered.
I’m reminded of one of my classmates at Cambridge who lived on the same floor as me in my first year. One evening, over a few drinks at a pub, he casually revealed that he was, in fact, a lord. I was stunned. Up until that moment, there had been no hint of it, no inherited mannerisms, no subtle name-dropping, no air of entitlement. He was simply a quiet, curious young man who loved science. He spent his days in the lab, completely absorbed in his experiments, and never once mentioned his family estate or title. For him, those things were incidental.
That encounter has stayed with me because it captures something essential about identity and aspiration. True character, whether British, Chinese, or bicultural, cannot be bought. It grows naturally from a child’s own curiosity, values, and sense of self. In the end, what defines us is not where we come from or what privileges we inherit, but the integrity with which we live and the curiosity with which we engage with the world.
My Role in Education
Working in education, I’ve come to see that my responsibility goes far beyond simply delivering what parents and children ask for. Of course, I want the best for both, but part of that commitment means offering honest, professional advice about how to achieve a goal, and sometimes even questioning whether that goal itself is the right one.
As educators, we build relationships founded on trust, and that trust must include the courage to disagree. There have been times in my career when my views have not been warmly received, when I’ve had to tell a parent that there might be a better path, even if it wasn’t the one they envisioned. Nevertheless, I believe that is part of the ethical duty of this profession.
My loyalty is, ultimately, to the child’s development, to helping them grow into thoughtful, independent individuals. And if that means occasionally losing a client or having a difficult conversation, so be it. Education, at its best, isn’t about pleasing everyone; it’s about doing what is right for the student. That, to me, is the true measure of responsibility in this work.