Blurring Boundaries in Private Supplementary Tutoring: Implications and Growth

1. Blurring Boundaries: The growing visibility, evolving forms and complex implications of private supplementary tutoring Mark Bray University of Hong Kong

2. Introduction Background and links to the conference theme • The field of comparative education • Educational change in the global context • The focus of this lecture

3. Private Supplementary Tutoring What do we mean? • academic • for financial gain • additional to the provision of mainstream schooling May be one-to-one, in small groups, large classes, or huge lecture theatres; and now includes internet tutoring

4. Private Supplementary Tutoring Why is it important? • Huge financial investments by households • Maintains and exacerbates social inequalities • Backwash on mainstream schools Yet the topic remains under-researched

5. A Shadow Education System Why a shadow? • Private tutoring only exists because the mainstream exists. • As the size and shape of the mainstream changes, so does that of the shadow. • In almost all societies, more public attention focuses on the mainstream than on its shadow.

6. Scale • Korea: 73% primary, 56% middle school • Hong Kong: 45% of primary, 35% lower secondary, 70% upper secondary • Egypt: 52% in rural primary schools; 64% in urban primary schools • Azerbaijan: 92% of senior secondary • Cyprus: 86% of secondary students • England: 27% at some time by the end of secondary • Czech Republic: ??

7. Scale Prevalence: • long been vigorous in East Asia • lower numbers but also deep roots in Eastern Europe • emerging in Africa • also emerging in Western Europe North America, Australia

8. Greece: €1.7 billion (2007) Germany: €1.5 billion (2009) Turkey: US$2.9 billion; 1.0% of GDP (2004) Korea: US$24 billion; 2.8% of GDP (2006) Costs

9. Who provides tutoring and how? • Professional tutors, working as individuals or for companies • Teachers, on a supplementary basis after school hours • University and secondary students • Retired teachers

10. Who receives tutoring and why? • Not necessarily the weak students – more common among the strong ones; • A lot of peer pressure and anxiety, both among students and among parents.

11. Implications Pupils: • If tutoring helps students to pass examinations, it can be a very good investment: they stay longer in the education system and have greater lifetime earnings • But has major implications for social stratification • Also pressure on young people

12. Implications Tutors: • Provides incomes and employment for professional tutors • Where salaries of mainstream classroom teachers are low, it can compensate • But also distorts the teaching and learning processes?

13. An agenda for comparative education research Blurring Boundaries: The growing visibility, evolving forms and complex implications of private supplementary tutoring

14. An agenda for comparative education research Shadow education research network (ShERN) Comparative Education Research Centre The University of Hong Kong www.hku.hk/cerc mbray@hku.hk