Equalising schooling,unequalising private supplementary tutoring: access and tracking through shadow education in China

The global expansion of mass schooling has greatly increased opportunities for low-income families, and governments have devoted much effort to equalising access and quality in education systems. Alongside regular schooling, the so-called shadow education system of private supplementary tutoring has grown rapidly across the world. The fact that rich families can purchase more and better quality shadow education undermines the achievements of increased equality of opportunities in formal schooling. Drawing on a mixed-methods study in Shanghai, China, the article shows how shadow education has offset school equalisation policies through differentiation of access and through sorting mechanisms. Shadow education occupies a space beyond strict government control in which privileged families and elite schools ignore and mediate the equalisation policies, seeking competitive advantages. Uneven access to shadow education and tracking within it shape, maintain, and exacerbate inequitable schooling experiences at individual and institutional levels.     

国内课外补习研究回顾与展望

课外补习在国外被称为“影子教育（shadow education）”。国内有研究者将其称为“择教”,是与“择校”并列的教育选择形式之一。国内的课外补习研究主要是从课外补习的概念、成因、现状、影响和政策启示等方面展开的。未来该领域需要加强基础性理论研究、实证研究、比较研究等。     

Differentiated demand for private supplementary tutoring: Patterns and implications in Hong Kong secondary education

A growing number of students around the world receive private tutoring in academic subjects. Such tutoring is widely called shadow education because it mimics regular schooling as the school sector grows, so does the shadow; and as the curriculum in the school changes, so does the curriculum in the shadow. Private tutoring has long been a significant phenomenon in East Asia, but has not received adequate research attention.This paper focuses on private tutoring in Hong Kong. It draws on data collected through questionnaires from students in Grades 9 and 12, and analyzes the factors which shape the demand for private tutoring. The paper highlights the influence of school, family and individual factors on students’ demand, and reports on students’ declared reasons for taking private tutoring. It commences with a broad comparative picture, and concludes by showing what the Hong Kong data add to wider conceptual understanding.     

Shadow education: patterns and scale of private supplementary tutoring in English in secondary education at urban Dhaka in Bangladesh

Private supplementary tutoring with an additional fee is generally called shadow education, and this has become a common phenomenon in urban Dhaka, where patterns and scale of tutoring in English have been remarkable in recent years. This study used a mixed-methods approach that included quantitative and qualitative data collected from a survey and individual interview. Tutoring in English has been a regular feature of the teaching profession in this urban area. The paper examines various patterns of private tutoring in English and focuses on the amount of tutoring, including the tutoring received and not received by students in urban Dhaka. It shows the variations of scale regarding tutoring in English between male and female students. The study also identifies different types of private tutors who deliver supplementary tutoring. Finally, the choices pupils make regarding their evaluation on the effectiveness of shapes of tutoring in English are discussed.     

Private tutoring lessons supply: insights from online advertising in the Czech Republic

In many parts of the world, shadow education has become a major enterprise. Such is the case of the countries of the former Eastern Bloc, including the Czech Republic, which is in scope of this article. The study analyses the Internet supply of private tutoring lessons in academic subjects and assesses the micro- and macro-factors influencing the offered lesson price as set by private tutors. Based on the quantitative content analysis of 2058 individual tutor profiles advertising online, the author found a very unequal distribution of tutors within the country and a considerable proportion of mainstream schoolteachers acting as private lesson providers. The higher the formal education and age of the tutor, the higher the price they offer per lesson. Male tutors set higher prices than female tutors, and tutoring in foreign languages is generally more expensive than in any other subject. The results suggest that the features of private tutoring supply have implications for equity in education.     

School factors underlying demand for private supplementary tutoring in English: urban and rural variations in Bangladesh

Private supplementary tutoring has long existed in Bangladesh, as elsewhere in the world, but in recent decades has become much more visible. Much tutoring “shadows” or reproduces formal schooling as fee-based academic teaching outside school hours. This paper focuses on school factors that shape demand for private supplementary tutoring in English at the secondary level, drawing on data gained from both quantitative and qualitative methods. The paper is especially concerned with urban and rural variations, noting that rates of tutoring are greater in urban areas but that many factors converge to create similarities. Private tutoring in English is highly demanded because English is a compulsory course; and in addition to being a subject in its own right, it assists in the learning of other subjects. While private tutoring may support the academic learning of some pupils, it also has problematic dimensions. As such, the spread of tutoring across urban and rural areas is not necessarily to be welcomed.     

Visible pedagogic work: parenting,private tutoring and educational advantage in Australia

This article explores parents’ use of private tutoring services for their primary school children in Sydney, Australia's largest city. Using Bernstein's theories of invisible and visible pedagogies, we look, through the eyes of a small group of middle-class Chinese-background interviewees, at the tensions between certain pedagogic forms associated with private tutoring and schooling in contemporary contexts of educational competition. We show how some parents are openly seeking more explicit, visible forms of instruction through using private tutoring, to compensate for the perceived ‘invisible’, pedagogically progressive approach of Australian primary schooling. We argue that these parents’ enlistment of supplementary tutoring is a considered approach to their identification of a mismatch between (apparently) relaxed, child-centred classroom practices, and the demands of the more traditional examinations that regulate entry points to desired educational sites such as academically selective high schools and prestigious universities. Our findings show how paid tutoring is a contemporary pedagogic strategy for securing educational advantage, not just a ‘cultural’ practice prevalent among certain migrant communities, as it is often characterised. We suggest that an analytic focus on pedagogy can help connect issues of class, culture and competition in research on home–school relationships, offering a productive way for the field to respond to the tensions these issues engender.     

The de-facto privatization of secondary education in Egypt: a study of private tutoring in technical and general schools

Most secondary school students in Egypt enrol in private tutoring in almost all subjects throughout the school year. A large proportion of students have stopped attending school altogether due to their reliance on tutoring. This study of how educational markets are perpetuated at school level finds that in the technical track catering to the working classes, the market is forced upon students through physical and verbal intimidation by teachers receiving below subsistence wages. In the more middle class general secondary track, pressure to enrol in tutoring is less direct and the market is promoted as a necessity for competitive exam readiness, despite its unclear dividends. The result has been a de-facto privatization of secondary education facilitated by a state that has determined the material conditions of teachers, failed to prevent related abuse and corruption, and reduced its investment in education to the point that the market has effectively emptied out and displaced public schooling.     

Demand for private supplementary tutoring: conceptual considerations, and socio-economic patterns in Hong Kong

Despite the fact that in some parts of the world private supplementary tutoring is a huge industry with far-reaching economic, social and educational implications, the topic has been neglected by educational researchers. This paper focuses on the nature and determinants of demand for private supplementary tutoring. It first draws on literature from a wide range of countries to identify some conceptual considerations, and then presents data on socio-economic patterns of demand for tutoring in Hong Kong. It highlights the complexity of the topic, and calls for further detailed research in multiple settings.     

Responsibilising parents: the nudge towards shadow tutoring

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.     

The determinants and impact of private tutoring classes in Vietnam

Private tutoring is a widespread phenomenon in many developing countries, including Vietnam. Using the Vietnam Living Standards Surveys 1997–1998 and 1992–1993 for analysis, this paper finds evidence that private tutoring in Vietnam is a necessity in the household budget for both primary students and lower secondary students, and the trend to attend private tutoring is stronger at higher education levels. There is no evidence of gender discrimination in expenditure on private tutoring. Ethnic minority students spend less on private tutoring at the primary level but not at the lower secondary level, as do students living in rural areas. However, spending on private tutoring would fall significantly if the qualifications of primary school teachers are increased. Private tutoring is found to have significant impact on a student's academic performance, but the influence is larger for lower secondary students. This paper contributes to the available estimation techniques by extending the simultaneous Tobit model of Amemiya [(1974). Multivariate regression and simultaneous equation models when the dependent variables are truncated normal. Econometrica, 42(6), 999–1012] to a joint Tobit-ordered probit econometric model to address the possible endogeneity of household spending on private tutoring.     

A two-level study of predictors of private tutoring attendance at the beginning of secondary schooling in Germany: The role of individual learning support in the classroom

More and more students attend private supplementary tutoring to improve their academic achievement. Private tutoring might be understood as a reaction to insufficient instructional quality in school, especially regarding individual support. However, it might also be possible that parents generally see insufficient grades as an indicator of lacking support and engage a tutor in hopes of improvement or to enhance a competitive edge for their children. So far, the relationship between tutoring attendance and perceived individual learning support during classroom lessons has not been tested. We used multilevel analyses based on N = 2,842 students in 102 Grade 5 classrooms at German academic track schools to test for a relationship between private tutoring in several subjects and students’ shared perception of the instructional quality in these subjects. On the individual level, we controlled for typical predictors of private tutoring such as academic achievement and family income, as well as for additional variables such as working behaviour and parental homework assistance. In classrooms with more individual support, students were less likely to start private tutoring in English. However, we did not find comparable relationships for tutoring in mathematics and German. Therefore, school principals and educational policy-makers should monitor the incidence of private tutoring and consider within-school structured tutoring programmes as an effective measure to improve academic achievement and to meet parents’ desire for individualised instruction.     

An exploration of the interaction between global education policy orthodoxies and national education practices in Cambodia,illuminated through the voices of local teacher educators

Abstract

This research is based on a multi-disciplinary and multi-levelled analysis of evidence to present the case that education reform needs to be contextualised far more widely than is currently practised. It focuses on the voices of Cambodian local teacher trainers through interviews over a five-year period. Interview data is triangulated against academic sources, national policy documents and classroom observations. The research reveals how notions of globalisation and knowledge economy have led to education being driven by measurable outcomes resulting in simplified educational policies that have a negative impact on teacher development. By allowing the Khmer teacher trainers to articulate their opinions on a wide range of themes, the interviews provide evidence to support historical and cultural theories proposed by academics working in the social sciences in Cambodia. This approach identifies that a deeper contextual analysis should enable teacher development programmes to be more closely aligned to national contexts.     

Discursive practices of private online tutoring websites in Russia

A recent development in English teaching in Russia is the emergence of private online language-tutoring schools, which offer one-on-one lessons by means of audio/videoconferencing. It remains unclear: (1) how these new providers of educational services are presenting themselves to the potential learners; (2) what ideology they tend to drawn on and (3) whether there is sufficient similarity to conceptualise these websites as exemplars of the same genre. This paper employs the tools of critical discourse analysis (CDA), Genre Theory and Appraisal within the Systemic Functional Linguistics to study the language of 17 websites of private online language schools. The study aims to investigate whether the websites exhibit similar discourse and ideology and whether they might belong to the same ‘genre prototype’. The analysis reveals a considerable thematic, structural and rhetorical similarity between the websites and a high presence of neoliberal ideology.     

Student and tutor perceptions of effective tutoring in distance education

Questionnaire responses of 457 students and 602 tutors were used to investigate conceptions of a ‘good tutor.’ In each case, factor analysis identified scales that reflected key constructs; cluster analysis identified subgroups with different patterns of scale scores; and discriminant analysis determined the scales that contributed the most to differences among the clusters. Both sets of data yielded conceptions of tutoring that were described as task‐oriented and student‐oriented, respectively. The students’ data yielded an additional, career‐oriented conception. The tutors’ data yielded two additional conceptions that were described as knowledge‐oriented and impersonal, respectively. The distribution of the tutors’ conceptions (but not that of the students’ conceptions) varied across different faculties, suggesting that tutors from different disciplines have different beliefs about effective tutoring. The study suggests that both tutors and students would benefit from having a better appreciation of the importance of support in facilitating learning.     

Spatializing critical education: progress and cautions

Recently critical scholars have shown a renewed interest in spatial relations in educational contexts. In this essay we use selections from Gulson and Symes's edited volume Spatial theories of education as a point of departure to examine what spatial analysis can contribute to the critical education traditions. We argue that, when done thoughtfully, spatial theory can shed new light on existing and taken-for-granted social relations in education, though we raise cautions regarding particular forms of its application. In the process we connect the more recent attempts to ‘spatialize’ critical education to the ways in which space has been dealt with in past moments of critical work. Finally, we conclude by advocating for the expansion of the types of methodological tools used by critical theorists of spatial relations and of critical projects more broadly.     

Peer Tutoring for Anatomy Workshops in Cambodia

Historical loss of staff and teaching resources in Cambodia has resulted in significant challenges to anatomy education. Small group anatomy teaching opportunities are limited. A visit to Cambodia by a teaching team from the University of Melbourne in 2010 demonstrated it was possible to implement well-resourced anatomy workshops for this purpose. However, continuation of the workshop program was inhibited by the limited number of local teaching staff. In 2015, another team from the University of Melbourne returned to Cambodia to implement anatomy workshops that incorporated peer tutoring. The objective was to improve teacher-to-student ratios and to demonstrate that interactive anatomy workshops could be delivered successfully despite low staff numbers. The anatomy workshops were attended by 404 students of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, and Midwifery at the University of Puthisastra. Medical students were invited to act as peer tutors for nursing students. A five-point Likert scale questionnaire was used to determine student satisfaction with both the workshops and peer tutoring. The overwhelming majority were positive about the workshops and keen for them to continue. Almost all medical students who acted as peer tutors agreed or strongly agreed that this role increased their anatomical knowledge (98%) and confidence (94%). Most nursing students agreed or strongly agreed with statements that they would like peer tutoring to continue (94%) and that they would like to be peer tutors themselves (88%). This report demonstrates that peer tutoring could be an effective tool in educational settings where poor staff-to-student ratios limit delivery of interactive workshops.     

Game theory and educational policy: Private education legislation in China

This article presents a game theory analysis of legislating private education in China, based on set of primary and secondary documents related to this issue. The article argues that shaping educational legislation is a dynamic, repeated game of negotiation, cooperation, and/or competition on multiple occasions among various interested actors, including lawmaking institutions, each with its own goals, authorities, information sources, and strategies. This article suggests that game theory complements existing models for understanding the politics of educational legislation in China, and it elucidates the implications and limitations of using this approach to understand the dynamics and complexity of educational policymaking.     

Reconsidering regionalisation in global higher education: student mobility spaces of the European Higher Education Area

This paper examines international student mobility between member states of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), a group of 47 countries that committed to reforming their higher education systems to improve the comparability and compatibility of degrees. While increased student mobility is a key goal in its official documents, little research has empirically investigated student mobility patterns in respect to the EHEA. The analysis employs multivariate techniques to identify trends in student mobility between 1999 and 2009, using a spatial approach to visualise the relationships between member states as constituted through student mobility flows. Results show that within the analysis timeframe student flows in the EHEA became more even in their distribution, but that in terms of the relationships between states, the EHEA became more centralised and segmented, meaning that key actors mediated exchanges between peripheral states and the region was more easily divided into self-contained clusters. These trends indicate a need to critically reconsider the nature of the EHEA and its role in the globalisation of higher education.