The shadow education system: private tutoring and its implications for planners

Private tutoring is an important phenomenon that has arisen in a wide variety of countries and can have significant educational, social, and economic ramifications. However, due to the fact that it is a service provided outside the planning and control of the formal education system, the available information on its pervasiveness and potential implications is scarce. Bray makes one of the first investigations of this phenomenon through the systematisation and analysis of existing information. Thus, this booklet looks at why private tutoring arises, seeking to identify variables in the educational system, the wider socio-cultural context and the economy that accounts for, and shapes its existence. It also analyses how private tutoring can potentially affect a variety of factors including: the academic performance of students, wider social effects such as inequality and socialisation processes, and economic productivity. The booklet concludes by discussing the different policy options open to educational planners.