Does your son or daughter really need all those expensive grinds? And areyou strong enough to resist peer pressure to pay up?

There must be a good reason why many parents are spending more than €2,000 a year on grinds. Some blame weak and unassailable staff in the school system. Some claim that syllabuses are just too long and class sizes just too big. Others insist that the points system leaves non-academic students out in the cold. These are all good reasons.

But there are bad reasons too. Parents are as vulnerable to peer pressure as children are sometimes, and there is no greater motivator than parental guilt. If you hear that six girls in your daughter's maths class are all seeing the same "must-have" tutor, then you start to feel you're robbing her of a future if you don't get her feet under his table.

One parent I spoke to admitted to begging the local celebrity grind-giver to take her daughter on. The teacher in question was reluctant, having more than 20 students on the books already.

"I'm paying over €40 an hour for this grind and I feel like grovelling in gratitude every time I drop my daughter off for her grind. The thing is, I'm not even sure how good this tutor is, but everyone's vying for a place and I don't want my daughter to miss out. If it cost €100 an hour I'd scrub floors to pay it. That's what parents do."

Clearly, not every parent can afford to pay out €40 an hour and not every teacher is catering for upwards of 20 grind students at that rate. However, a recent survey conducted by the Farmer's Journal in tandem with the Union of Secondary Students revealed that sums in excess of €1,000 each year are not unusual for tuition in Ireland.

Barbara Johnston of the Catholic Secondary Schools Parents Association says parents are viewing private tuition as part and parcel of the education system now, and that grinds should be treated like any other business, attracting tax relief.

"In our experience, children are spending an average of three to four hours a week in private tuition. Parents are grouping together to organise grind sessions for their children and spending up to €200 per term per subject." At that rate, "average" parents could be laying out up to €2,400 in tuition fees over the course of the school year.

But does your son or daughter really need all that grinding? Not many parents moonlight as educational psychologists. Decisions about grinds are often based on the student's own opinion of his or her ability. A student may lack confidence in his ability to study on his own, he may dislike his teacher or feel pressured by his friends. I well remember viewing grinds in hated subjects as a way to avoid studying them on my own. In short, it was laziness.

Getting people to talk openly about the grind sector is difficult. Parents don't want to talk about how much they are spending, students don't want to admit that their results are bolstered by grinds and as for teachers - well let's just say I rang several schools and individual teachers and no one wanted to touch the subject.

Because the grind issue is heavy with issues of pride and financial probity, parents feel that they can't get reliable information and so they err on the side of safety.

We're all principled in our own way, and the grind system is a racket that many parents would love to take a stand against. The trouble is, no one wants to make a guinea pig of their own child and so they let the system grind them down.

The sad part is that only a fraction of the nation's parents can throw two grand at the problem - the rest must muddle through. Perhaps one measure parents can take is to investigate the level of extra tuition feeding the results of top performing schools, before they enrol their children.

Maybe it is the grinds that are ensuring the points and not the schools?

Girls are outperforming boys in the Leaving Certificate, but last year's survey of 1,000 students by Student Enrichment Services found that girls in single-sex schools were the greatest users of grind services in the State, with almost 66 per cent of them attending extra classes (down from 70 per cent in the previous year). The overall average for sixth years was 61 per cent.

One private school student revealed that every single person in his honours maths class was taking grinds, and that some were taking one-on-one grinds each morning of the Easter holidays, followed by group sessions every afternoon.

Perhaps parents should think twice before investing all their money on private school education when that money might be better spent on after-hours tuition.