Table of Contents

INTERNATIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION

Private Tutoring in India

Pawan Agarwal
Pawan Agarwal is a visiting scholar at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, Core 6A, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi-110003, India. E-mail: pawan.agarwal06@gmail.com.

India has a tiny quality sector in higher education. The seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and six Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are at the top of this quality hierarchy. With a strong meritocratic tradition, these institutions are ranked among the most highly selective higher education institutions in the world. Entry into many other medical, engineering, and management institutions is just as difficult. As a result of strong linkages between admission to these institutions and later life opportunities, these institutions have high-stakes entrance exams. Strategic interventions by students and parents to improve performance on these tests have stimulated a rapid growth of private tutoring in India.

Changing Patterns
There is a long tradition of private tutoring in India. Earlier, a teacher used to make some money by teaching a gathering of 10 to 15 students in a makeshift classroom in his house after school. He solicited students through word of mouth. (This home-based private tutoring is referred to as "private tuitions.") This form of tutoring essentially provided remedial classes for academically weak students.

The focus on admissions exams of reputed institutions and a plethora of tests for entry into government and the public sector has now transformed the tutoring business. Prime commercial addresses with spacious classrooms capable of accommodating hundreds of students and specialized, full-time teachers are now offered. Classrooms are now air-conditioned and equipped with modern teaching aids and comfortable furniture. Customized education packages, glossy brochures, and a complete marketing strategy for promotion are provided. Though this continues to be a largely urban phenomenon, private tutoring has made inroads in rural areas as well.

No longer a covert job, private tutoring has become a booming industry. This organized private tutoring is referred to as coaching classes in India. Big private players—such as FIIT JEE, IMS, Career Launcher, and Career Point—have nationwide franchise operations. Some of these firms are even offering coaching to students in the United States.

Many coaching centers are bad and indifferent, charge heavy fees, and prey on the anxieties of parents. Teachers from regular schools moonlight at these centers and use quasi-blackmail methods to exact demand for tutoring from their regular students. However, other centers are well organized, have specialized tutors, and use instructional guidebooks and materials, provide customized programs, conduct periodic assessment of students' progress, and provide students with diagnostic feedback. Some centers develop their own teaching and practice materials and provide guidance and information services.

Private tutoring has become a significant portion of household spending. Some of the big players have estimated the market potential of organized coaching in India, for a number of competitive exams alone, at Rs. 70 billion (US$1.6 billion), nearly half of what the government spends on higher education annually. Spending levels for home-based private tutoring are much higher than for classes at coaching centers.

Is Private Tutoring Bad?
In a 1999 nationwide survey, two-thirds of the people expressed the opinion that coaching institutes flourish because of the poor quality of education; nearly 90 percent stated that even the best students feel the need for systematic coaching. Ninety percent of parents were even prepared to pay the high fees for private tutoring since they felt that this would be an essential investment in their children's future. While no systematic study has been conducted on the influence of private tutoring on student performance, the fact that nearly 60 percent of students who qualified for admission to IITs in 2004 had received some form of private tutoring seems to suggest that there is a linkage.

Private tutoring in India has become one of the most important, yet unacknowledged, factors in children's performance on the high-stakes entry tests. The inability of families from the lower-income population to spend much on tutoring results in inequalities in academic competitiveness, particularly in rural areas. This situation skews the class-mix in higher education, particularly in institutions with competitive entrance exams.

Moreover, private tutoring appears to cause some problems—including a weakening of students' self-directed learning capabilities, students' low engagement in classroom teaching, and undue pressures (both financial and psychological) on parents as well as students. Private tutoring also increases inequalities in access to highly selective higher education institutions. The tutoring culture is making education a unifocal exam-oriented activity. Instead of imparting a holistic education, it force-feeds students with knowledge to get high marks but does not enhance the questioning, reasoning, or analytical ability so vital to meeting the challenges of life.

This phenomenon can be observed in other countries. The effectiveness of Japan's school system in teaching difficult subjects like math and science is often attributed to the widespread use of after-school tutoring known as juku and yobiko in Japan. In Korea, high levels of family expenditure on private tutoring (hakwon) is believed to have the salutary effect of ensuring high academic achievement on the part of Korean students, particularly their high science and math scores.

Considering these factors, it is difficult to say whether private tutoring is definitely bad. Tutoring appears to fill a vacuum left by a grossly inadequate formal school system. Though only a few thousand students may get entry into the limited number of quality institutions, competition tends to push up the science and math skills of a large section of the student population that aspires for entry into these highly selective institutions. This may be providing a competitive edge to the workforce from India. For this reason, it would be inappropriate to dismiss private tutoring totally.

Conclusion
The growing dissatisfaction of parents with the formal school system and their realization that bad exam results will doom the life chances of their offspring will further stimulate the growth of private tutoring. With the emergence of mass private tutoring, distinction between formal and informal learning would get blurred. Private tutoring costs will occupy a significant proportion of household expenditure on education. Efforts to control or monitor private tutoring are likely to meet with only limited success.

Several measures could be taken to cope with the growing incidence of private tutoring. These could include making teachers in the formal school system more accountable and the schools qualitatively more competitive; reviewing the selection criteria for entry to higher education institutions; and, finally, supporting students from poor households and in rural areas so that they are better prepared for entry to reputed and highly competitive higher education institutions.

Since it is not feasible to control supplementary private tutoring and perhaps not even desirable to curb it, considering that it might be raising the country's average levels of achievement, the best option is to adopt a coping strategy that takes care of its negative consequences.

[Online] Available: http://www.bc.edu/cihe/newsletter/Number45/p21_Agarwal.htm