Private Tutoring: Evidence from India

• Author: Mehtabul Azam
• Published date: 01 November 2016
• Date: 01 November 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/rode.12196

Private Tutoring: Evidence from India

Mehtabul Azam*

Abstract

Drawing on the nationally representative “Participation and Expenditure in Education” surveys, we docu-

ment the incidence and cost of private tutoring at different stages of schooling over the last two decades in

India. As private tutoring involves two decisions: (1) whether to take private tuition or not, and (2) how

much to spend on private tutoring conditional on positive decision in (1), we analyze the determinants of

the two decisions separately using a Hurdle model. We find that private tutoring is not a new phenomenon

in India: a significant proportion of students at each stage of schooling took private tutoring even in 1986/

87, and there has been no dramatic increase in those proportions. Students from urban areas, private

schools, and from better economic backgrounds are more likely to take private tutoring. Furthermore, the

demand for private tutoring is inelastic at each stage of schooling, which implies that private tutoring is a

necessary good in the household consumption basket. We also find evidence of pro-male bias in both deci-

sions regarding private tutoring.

1. Introduction

It is evident to most casual observers in urban centers in India that a large proportion

of students at secondary and senior secondary levels attend private coaching, and

there has been a tremendous growth in private coaching centers in the recent past.1

This is perhaps driven by a combination of factors. First, there is a pervasive belief in

India that private tutoring provides a distinctive edge in exams. Second, the perfor-

mances in public examinations at the end of secondary school (grade 10) and senior

secondary school (grade 12) are important determinants of success, given the intense

competition for entering into desired academic streams at the higher levels. However,

there exists limited documentation on the prevalence and determinants of private

tutoring in India. Studies on private tutoring in India are few and based on sporadic

surveys. Based on a random sample of 4031 students studying in grades IX–X in

2005/06 in 49 schools from four districts spread over four Indian states: Kerala, Maha-

rashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, Sujatha (2014) reports that 44.7% were

seeking private tutoring for one or more subjects. The extent of private tuition varies

among four sampled states, ranging from 32% to 55%. Aslam and Atherton (2012)

use SchoolTells survey, a survey of primary schools carried out in the 2007/08 school

year in 160 rural primary schools across 10 districts of two north Indian states: Uttar

Pradesh and Bihar, and find that nearly a fifth of all children surveyed were taking

private tuition.

The phenomenon of private tutoring is not restricted to higher grades, and urban

areas. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER, 2013), a household-based

survey covering rural India, reports that in 2013, 22.6% (26.1%) of children in grades

I–V (VI–VIII) in rural India attend private tutoring. The ASER survey only collects

* Azam: Oklahoma State University, Department of Economics and Legal Studies in Business, 326 Busi-

ness Building, Stillwater, OK 74074, USA. E-mail: mazam@okstate.edu. Also affiliated to IZA, Bonn,

Germany.

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Review of Development Economics, 20(4), 739–761, 2016

DOI:10.1111/rode.12196

information on children aged 3–16 residing in rural areas, thus excludes the majority

of children attending secondary (grades IX–X) and senior secondary (grades XI–XII)

levels. In addition, ASER is restricted to rural areas.2

Private tutoring is defined as fee-based tutoring that provides supplementary

instruction to children in academic subjects they study in the mainstream education

system (Dang and Rogers, 2008). Private tutoring is widely called shadow education

because in many locations it coexists with mainstream schooling and mimics the

regular school system—as the school system grows, so does the shadow; and as the

curriculum in the school changes, so does the curriculum in the shadow (Bray and

Lykins, 2012). Substantial private tutoring industries can be found in countries as

economically and geographically diverse as Cambodia, the Arab Republic of Egypt,

Japan, Kenya, Morocco, Romania, Singapore, the USA, and the UK (Dang and

Rogers, 2008), and India is not an outlier as far as private tutoring is concerned.

India has witnessed a tremendous growth in enrollment over the last two decades.

It is possible that parents may perceive this massive expansion of education as a

decline in quality of education in schools, and possibly compensate for that by sup-

plementary education.3Unfortunately, no national data on learning achievement

levels were available in India until 2006. India’s largest educational non-governmental

organization (NGO), Pratham, carried out a survey of learning achievement in 2005

and repeated the survey with a bigger sample of about 330,000 households in 2006

(Kingdon, 2007). Moreover, in several countries (such as South Korea and Japan)

with high-quality school systems, shadow education appears to have become a perma-

nent feature (Bray and Lykins, 2012).

From a policy perspective however, it is important to not only have reliable esti-

mates of prevalence of private tutoring but also a knowledge about the determinants

of private tutoring. For example, what factors drive the demand for private tutoring?

Do only rich households use private tutoring? From an education production perspec-

tive as well as a policy perspective, another important question remains whether

private tutoring adds to students’ achievement. The evidence regarding the effective-

ness of private tutoring in increasing students’ achievement is limited in India. Based

on achievement tests in mathematics and reading ability for over 4000 students in

grade 2 and 4 from rural schools from two Indian states, Aslam and Atherton (2012)

find a positive affect of private tutoring on private and government school students.

Dongre and Tewary (2014) using ASER data from rural India find positive and sig-

nificant impact of private tutoring on learning levels of students at elementary levels

(grades I–VIII). Evidence at the secondary and senior secondary levels are mostly

anecdotal. Moreover, the evidence from other countries are conflicting. Dang (2007)

and Dang and Rogers (2008) investigate the effect of private tutoring in Vietnam,

while Ono (2007) examines the effect of private tutoring in Japan. These studies indi-

cate a strong positive effect of private tutoring on students’ performance. In contrast,

Briggs (2001), Gurun and Millimet (2008) and Kang (2007) examine the impact of

private tutoring in the USA, Turkey and South Korea, and find negligible effects of

tutoring on pupils’ educational outcomes.

If private tutoring has a positive impact on academic achievement of students in

India as believed by parents and suggested by limited evidence, it can be used as a

remedial measure where additional help is provided to lagging students to catch up

with the rest, or it can be used to excel in public examinations, and can potentially

maintain or exacerbate already existing differentials resulting from differences in

parents’ educational/economic backgrounds. Since the evidence on the academic

ability of students attending private tutoring is lacking, the socio-economic profile of

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

740 Mehtabul Azam