Changing Dynamics of Private Tutoring in India

• In Event: Tracing the “ghosts” of (modern) schooling and exposing its limits in non-formal spaces: Transnational and translational studies in education

Proposal

The current pandemic has seen changes in multiple dimensions of the education industry around the world. While most countries faced difficulty in achieving optimal learning achievement indicators, the Global South countries were faced with far greater challenges. Equity, justice, access and quality indicators which are often under question due to several systemic gaps we faced as we battled the pandemic. One such crisis was the learning of students in online mode both in formal and non-formal education sector. While formal education i.e. schools and university suffered a pre-service training lacuna and a resource shortage; the informal industry i.e. shadow education, education technology, test-preparation faced crisis of reduced investments and high opportunity cost during economic slowdown. While the tutors and teachers faced lay-offs, salary cut-offs and multi-classroom teaching, households had to chose between investment in formal or informal institutes to ensure best learning opportunities for their children. In cases where parents witnessed teachers’ incapacities to conduct online classes, weighed against test-prep and tutoring franchise immediately bouncing back with more technology friendly faculty, parents lost trust in formal schooling setups.Improved test scores, increased access to university education, the promise of a better future was something assumed to be much more possible where the faculty themselves had a hanging sword of performance and deliverables, which is the very quintessence of neo-liberal tutoring markets. Thus, private tutoring or shadow industry was found to be more coherent with household aspirations of marks and rankings. In such a case, not only is the state responsibility for providing education as a human right shakened, rather questions of equity and access arise for all households that may not have the disposable income to invest in massively growing education markets, expanding on the pre-text of better learning than formal schooling. An inquiry into this informal shadow tutoring market is proposed through this paper.

The present study describes how the demand, impact and expansion of private tutoring industry has shaped over the last three decades in the Indian subcontinent. Initially referred as the ‘shadow’ of the formal schooling system helping students improve grades at school, the tutoring industry evolved into a more organised form of ‘test-prep’ whose franchises were bought and sold based on the ranking students achieved in pre-university admissions; now has transformed into a nexus overshadowing the formal schooling system where not only can one gain conceptual understanding to improve scores in schools and university, but can be feared to eventually overpower, manipulate and even monopolise teaching and learning. This change witnessed can be difficult to capture and control without any state policy intervention. The Common University Entrance Test (CUET) an all-India test, organized by National Testing Agency for admission to various Undergraduate, Integrated, Postgraduate, Diploma, Certification courses and Research Programmes introduced by the New Education Policy is facing apprehensions from university faculty on grounds of its necessity to require ‘test-prep’ to succeed.

The industry gains its legitimation not only from aspirational parents and students, unemployed skilled youth, rather from the government through partnerships to enhance learning goals. Such partnerships between state funded schools and tutoring agencies have formed a ‘new tutoring market’ where the state covertly admits its incapability of attending to the need for educating its youth by legitimising partnerships that serve the immediate goal of ‘inclusion’ and ‘equity’ for the ones who cannot afford tutoring otherwise; while on the other side ensuring improved country rankings in global tests by pushing out the underperforming students. The paper discusses both privatisation of existing-formal-schooling-sector and growth of private-informal-institutions. It explores the debate around the welfare-state’s responsibility to ensure the education as right and the public-private partnerships adopted by the state to enhance equitable-access to educational during desperate times.

With an approach to trace this change in the private tutoring markets in India, the study has been conducted in three stages: Phase I which happened in 2007-08; Phase II conducted in 2017-18; and the last post –pandemic Phase III (2020-22). The study is an empirical as well as analytical account of the characteristics of the neo-liberal tutoring markets characterised by extensive testing, exclusionary practices of formal institutions and desperate attempts to establish learning equilibriums. Each phase is a full-fledged qualitative study in itself conducted by the authors to study the need, impact and growth of the industry analysing using similar themes, combined to form this larger study that analytically reflects on the trajectory of the dynamic nature of tutoring markets in India. Though, each phase used a different sample group in the primary study and cannot be generalised, yet it showed trends of accessing and legitimising tutoring leading to massive expansion of the non-formal tutoring markets. The last phase is a section of the doctoral study where one author is the researcher and other is the doctoral supervisor or thesis advisor.

The study holds much relevance for the theme of learning in school settings and in-formal systems vis-a-vi their interconnectedness and mutually impacting nature. Equity and inclusion are questioned when a country aims for inclusive growth while dealing with situations that lead to limitations on capacity building of the youth. This questions the life-long learning, innovation and research intensive agenda of country’s vision 2047. While it may establish a name for India in world rankings, growth of an unregulated industry and questions on teacher capabilities being judged through student performances does not aptly justify student leaning and knowledge. Excessive accountability, performance pressure and fear of being jobless, leaves teachers with anxiety that goes much beyond the professional workspace deliverables. Finally, the study helps inform policy for learning and assessment that is inclusive even during adverse circumstances like the pandemic. It argues for the formal acknowledgement of the industry and its impact, it urges for a policy that creates structures preventing exclusion of students due to emergence of ‘new tutoring markets’ in the era of the ‘New Education Policy, 2020’.
In totality, the theme draws relevance as we seek answers to change as improvement in equity indicators for access and quality education.

Authors

• Harshita sharma, National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi, India

• Neeru Snehi, National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi, India