Tuition with caution

Even as the vision of transforming India into an 'equitable and vibrant knowledge society by providing high-quality education to all, and thereby making India a global knowledge superpower', as envisaged by the NEP 2020, is yet to be realised, the tuition industry — the 'parallel education' and the 'new normal' — poses a predicament for, if not an undoing of, the entire system. Firstly, the thriving private tuition business is only proving that learning and economic status have a positive correlation — a challenge to the state policy of mitigating socioeconomic inequalities through quality education to all. Secondly, tuition distracts students from collective learning in the school environment and from developing as a well-rounded personality, essential for grooming them into responsible future citizens. Thirdly, paid learning squeezes the budgets of parents; the burden is doubled on parents of private school students already paying fat sums as annual fee, ironically including 'tuition fee'. Above all, private tuition breeds irresponsibility among formal school teachers, so much so that even private schools advise parents to engage private tuitions for their kids.

One can go on counting the ills of private tuition but, at the same time, it will only be uncharitable to condemn the industry as an evil, ignoring the brighter side of the well-evolved age-old institution of learning, which is actually supplementing the government's efforts in addressing quality concerns while also providing stable employment to a large number of qualified people in the country. The predicament, however, cannot remain unaddressed for long, for we cannot afford a laissez-faire in the field of education — a primary social obligation for governments.

Private tuition, as an institution, came into existence alongside the formal institutions of education across the world. Surveys show that percentage of students attending tuitions in secondary education in Europe are: 84 per cent in Greece, 70 per cent in Lithuania, 77 per cent in Malta, 63 per cent in Spain, 60 per cent in Hungary, 54.7 per cent in Portugal, 52 per cent in Poland, 50 per cent in Luxemburg, 45 per cent in Ireland, 41 per cent in the UK and, 40 per cent in Italy. According to the Global Education Census, among Asian countries, when 90 per cent children in elementary schooling received tuition in South Korea, 85 per cent of high school children went to private tuitions in Hong Kong; likewise, the figures for Japan and Malaysia were 70 per cent and 83 per cent, respectively. However, the pattern of attendance in private tuitions in Europe varied, depending on various factors such as personal ambitions, choice of subject, credibility of agency etc. Tuition there is seen more as a facility to enrich student's subject knowledge — supplementing the school teaching as students aspire to excel in academics. In Asian countries, however, tuition has become an inseparable component of formal education — aptly called 'shadow schooling' since it makes good for what is missing in classrooms; it is a basic necessity to learn in order to pass in examinations, which schools barely fulfill.

A study by Prof. K Sujatha, National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), shows that a high tendency for private tuition is observed in states where serious problems of quality education exist at secondary levels. Kerala, despite success in universal access and participation, has the highest percentage of tuition seekers (55 per cent), followed by an industrially and educationally advanced state like Maharashtra (49.35 per cent), and Uttar Pradesh (46.67 per cent) while it was only 32.26 per cent in Andhra Pradesh. Effective administrative intervention in AP, through disincentives to teachers for poor performance in public exams, is found to have helped improve the quality of education and reduce dependency on tuition. Secondly, most private tutorial and coaching centres in AP got transformed gradually into full-fledged private schools, and a keen competition among them was responsible for quality maintenance. Many other studies, in general, point to the fact that lack of effective control on both government and private schools in terms of delivery is responsible for exponential growth in the tuition market.

There is a boom in the tuition industry today, as two important factors, inter alia, fueled the demand for tuition: growing awareness about the importance of best learning and the rise in family incomes of people over the last two decades. The global private tutoring market size stood at USD 92.59 billion in 2020, with giant participants including BYJU'S, Club Z! Inc., Chegg, ETutor, Tutor Group, John Wiley & Sons Inc., Kaplan, Khan Academy, Pearson Plc, Preply, Revolution Prep, Skooli, Tal Group, etc. The industry is thriving not only with competitiveness and product variation but also by going in for strategic acquisitions and partnerships. The Indian tuition market is worth around USD 20 billion today, and is expected to grow by leaps and bounds.

Growth in the tuition industry in developing countries is only a symptom signifying a much-deeper malaise entrenched into the school education system. We can't blame the private tuition industry without examining the issues in the right perspective. In a country with around 15 lakh schools, more than 33,000 nurseries and a thousand universities, ensuring quality of learning is an extremely difficult task. Students in government-run schools and colleges face greater disadvantage, as 17 per cent of the teachers' posts (around 1,06,000) are officially said to stand vacant for years. When private schools are profiteering under the 'celebrated brands', caring too little for excellence, government schools are plagued by typical problems like crowded classrooms, lack of subject specialists, one teacher teaching many subjects, teachers' absenteeism, lack of inspection by authorities etc. Another peculiar feature of government schools is that teachers are also assigned non-teaching tasks, including census activities and election duty, often at the cost of the precious teaching time.

Addressing the issues in the education system is more important than declaring a war on private tuition. The much-hyped China's crackdown on the tuition industry is no success story, let alone a model for other countries. It was merely a trial-and-error exercise whose impact is yet to be tested while a huge number of jobs were lost as a side-effect. Prof. Mark Bray, an eminent scholar from Hong Kong University, feels (and agreeably so) that the tuition industry should be recognised and evaluated, as it has strong implications for the knowledge economy, the labour market, performance of schools, and the lives of children and families.

Populist measures purported to curb tuition will only end up encouraging underground activities. For example, South Korea banned private tuitions in 1980 but, when black marketing of tuition flourished even at higher fees, the ban had to be lifted in 2020. Besides, it is unethical to handle the matter with an iron fist since tuition is neither a crime nor an antisocial activity. On the contrary, it is an efficient parallel institution useful for developing human resources. Each country needs to develop its own model of dealing with private tuition because what works in one country may not work in another. While proper surveys are necessary to create a database to make policy interventions, identification of ways to engage with market forces have become indispensable. Governments should regulate the tuition sector by aiming at equity-oriented optimum utilisation of trained private academic manpower with a mutually beneficial collaboration between both institutions i.e., the educational institutions and the tuition firms. The guidelines may include concessions for economically and socially weaker sections, partnership between schools and tuition firms, creation of a knowledge pool, financial assistance to aspiring tutors and tuition firms etc. The NEP perhaps needs a revival.

The writer is a former Addl. Chief Secretary of Chhattisgarh. Views expressed are personal