Private Tutoring Coupled with Public Schooling

According to the 2012 estimates, private tutoring constituted an $11 billion industry in the U.S. Iveta Silova and Peggy Kong, both professors of comparative and international education at Lehigh, examine five implications of tutoring for educational quality and equity across the world.

1. TUTORING OFFERS OPPORTUNITIES: According to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, education should be free and accessible to all. Yet, many families believe that public schooling is becoming increasingly insufficient to meet their children’s educational goals. Evidence from Asia, the United States and the former Soviet Republics suggests that parents view private tutoring as an integral part of their children’s education. Whether preparing for high-stakes examinations or pursuing extracurricular activities, families rely on private tutoring to increase their children’s educational opportunities.

2. ...BUT THEY COME WITH A PRICE TAG: The rise of private tutoring signals an increasing commodification of education worldwide. Education is no longer perceived as a public good, but rather as a private benefit that can be bought and sold in the education marketplace.

3. WE RISK LOSING THE HUMANITIES: The burden for “buying” education is increasingly shifted onto families. Due to the tightening of educational budgets, music and arts have been practically eliminated in public school curricula in many education systems around the world. The responsibility for nurturing creativity and appreciation for developing the heart, mind and body has thus shifted into the private sphere where music, art and even physical education can be purchased by those who can afford it.

4. ENGAGING IN CLASS WARFARE: Notwithstanding its multiple positive aspects—such as expanding knowledge and interests for individuals, accumulating human capital for societies and providing new strategies for coping with rapid geopolitical transitions—private tutoring has serious implications for educational equity. It is generally unaffordable to families of lower socio-economic groups and rural areas. Private tutoring thus functions as a “sorting ma.chine” through which inequality and privilege are reproduced, thus undermining education’s main purpose of equalizing the society. 

5. A RISING ETHICAL DILEMMA: Private tutoring also has major ethical implications. It is frequently linked to educational corruption, whereby underpaid teachers use tutoring to supplement their official salaries. Research reveals that teachers can make private tutoring “compulsory” by forcing their own students to take private tutoring lessons after school hours. This sends mixed signals to students about the value of education in public schooling and private tutoring.  Moreover, the integrity of teachers is compromised in the eyes of students and parents, further discrediting the public education system.