Private tutoring is part of the everyday life of hundreds of thousands of students all around the world, and its prevalence is growing. However, despite a proliferation of research on private tutoring, little is known about the role that school plays in shaping the phenomenon. This study investigates school-related factors that may affect private tutoring attendance in maths and German using two German nationwide samples of Grade 10 students (over 15,000 participants in total). These factors are: teacher support in the classroom, classroom management, teacher collaboration with the teacher body and teacher-family communication. We also verified the role of various individual factors, including student helplessness and the subjective task values. Two-level logistic regression analyses did not confirm the role of school-related factors. However, private tutoring attendance was affected by student helplessness, subjective task values, past school achievement, cognitive ability, gender, mother tongue and type of school attended, although the pattern of results differed between subjects. The results highlight the role of motivational factors behind the decision to take private tutoring, which has been rarely inquired into, and the remedial nature of private tutoring. They also show that school contribution to the decision remains elusive, at least for maths and German.