English private tutoring and social class dynamics in India

• In Event: A South Asia exploration of shadow education, decolonization concepts in libraries and curriculum, and transformational leadership

Proposal

English is typically mentioned as the medium of instruction in most literature on the Indian schooling and shadow education system. Many of these studies investigate increasing enrolment in ‘English-medium’ schools (a term used to describe schools that teach and assess student performance in the English language) and how students’ enrolment in ‘English-medium schools’ affects their subscription to tutoring services. For example, drawing on three rounds of surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), two in the mid and late 1990s and one in the mid-2000s, Azam (2016) argues that children enrolled in ‘English-medium’ schools are more likely than their counterparts in ‘vernacular schools’ (that use vernacular languages, such as Hindi, for instructional and assessment purposes) to seek tutoring support.

This difference is usually explained by the prevalent social class dynamic in the Indian education system. Indeed, scholars have suggested that parents who can afford ‘English-medium’ schools are likely to be able to afford private tuition fees. Other reasons, such as learning difficulties and parents’ desire for their children to excel academically, are also discussed as key contributors to the rising demand for private tutoring in India (Gupta, 2020; Bhorkar & Bray, 2018).

While studies about private tutoring in India have discussed English Private Tutoring (henceforth, EPT) as part of the broader subject range for which tutoring services are available, none have explicitly investigated the specificities of EPT within the wider landscape of the tuition industry. Furthermore, if and how EPT interacts with social class dynamics in the broader educational landscape is still unknown.
To redress these gaps, this paper: 1) maps the nature and scope of EPT in India and draws on my conceptualisation of the ‘shadowing process’ (Gupta, 2021a) to do so, and 2) shows the relationship between EPT and social class dynamics in globalising India.

This paper draws on an educational ethnography conducted in Dehradun, India, during 2014-15 that aimed to examine the private tutoring market in relation to formal schooling and the changing social class relations in contemporary India. Exploring these relationships – how we understand them and their implications – is relevant to making sense of the past and the present and future impact of the EPT, specifically, and the private tutoring industry more broadly, on society.

To understand the EPT market, I analysed the advertisements for English tutoring support, which were visible in the cityscape in the form of hoardings and banners painted on walls, pamphlets, and so on. I have used some of these in this paper to demonstrate the variety of private tutoring support in Dehradun city and the differences in the tutoring services for spoken English.

This dataset is supported by interviews with five tutors offering services for spoken English. The interviews were carried out in two tutoring centres. I asked primarily open-ended questions to understand the tutors’ perceptions, experiences and practices regarding the services they offered. Each interview lasted for at least an hour and often longer. These interviews were audio-recorded. I spoke with some tutors more than once, more informally, during my occasional visits to their centres. These visits allowed me to supplement the data from the initial interviews with tutors. I analysed my interactions with parents in 53 middle-class families to examine the relationship between EPT and social class dynamics. The annual household income of these families was between INR 300,000 and 500,000 (USD 4,490 and 7,484). Interviews with parents were conducted in their homes when most convenient for family members. Each interview lasted about 1-1.5 hours.

The qualitative data were digitalised and analysed in two stages (Boeije 2010). The first, coding, involved assigning codes to various parts of the transcripts and images of advertisements. Then I assigned the coded data to multiple categories. The second stage of the analysis involved making sense of these categories or segments and noting the themes that emerged from the data.

The paper offers conceptual insights into the ways in which private tutoring relates to, influences, shapes, and is shaped by the broader educational and societal landscape in India. Although this discussion will be empirically grounded in India, the conceptual insights it offers will help understand the implications of EPT across societies, especially those that are post-colonial, which are also impacted by the forces of meritocracy, knowledge economy and globalisation.

This paper brings to the fore the following Engagement priorities for future research:
1. How does EPT feature in the complexity of private tutoring provisions across social and historical contexts?
2. What are the implications of EPT for broader social practices (class relations, for example) beyond the formal education system?
3. How can we use private tutoring as a vantage point to review the processes and established forms of educational and social inequalities?
4. Could private tutoring be an avenue for lifelong learning?
5. What are the implications of private tutoring for broader issues such as social inequality and exclusion in contemporary society?

Author

• Achala Gupta, Southampton Education School, University of Southampton