This article considers moral agendas projected onto parents that mobilise them to supplement school literacy education with private tutoring. The theoretical frame draws on the concepts of responsibilisation as emerging market-embedded morality, 'nudge' social policies, edu-business and hidden privatisation in education. This framing is applied to two empirical moments: firstly, debates around the Australian government's 'Tutorial Voucher Initiative' of 2004; and secondly, tutoring advertisements and items in school newsletters collected in early 2016. In the first moment, parents were somewhat reluctant to take up free supplementary tutoring; in the second, private literacy tutoring is increasingly normalised and legitimated as parents are nudged to supplement the work of the school.