The Equity Challenge Thrown Up By Our Culture Of Private Tuitions

Context: We must improve state-run schools and democratize the access of students to individualized lessons.

Culture of private tuitions in India

• Wide coverage: According to the 75th round of the National Sample Survey, up to 30% of school students (pre-primary through higher secondary level) across the country avail of private coaching.
• India reportedly spent over Rs.23,000 crore in 2018 on private tutoring. Incidentally, the budget allocation for the National Education Mission was nearly Rs 28,000 crore in the same year.
• Inter-state disparity: 60% of students in West Bengal and less than 5% in Himachal Pradesh availing private tuition.
• Factors responsible: Household characteristics, peer pressure, intense competition and school quality (or its perception) influence the decision to avail of supplementary tuition.

Issues associated with private tuitions

• Undermines the true intent of education: Tutors mostly teach students how to score well on tests, inhibiting their creativity and inquisitiveness by providing quick ‘recipes’ to ‘solve’ questions.
• An outcome of the poor state of education in government schools: 
  • The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER, 2018) suggests a negative association between tuition participation and school-quality indicators at government schools in rural areas. 
    • Students at schools that satisfy pupil-teacher ratio norms stipulated by the Right to Education (RTE) Act are found to use less private tutoring.
• Exacerbating learning disparities: Elementary math and reading skills are higher among class 1, 2 and 3 students who take private tutoring.
• Gender and income divide in access to private tutoring: Tuition participation and expenditure have been found to be higher among boys and among children of wealthier households.
• Lukewarm policy response: E.g. Questions raised in Parliament concerning the fee and advertising practices of coaching centres have received mostly unsatisfactory responses 
  • This is possibly because of the informal and unregulated nature of operations within the country’s coaching industry.

Way forward

• Attitude change from policymakers: Instead of perceiving it as a ‘shadow’ that needs to be curtailed, policymakers could leverage the services of tutors or volunteers to provide individualized attention and remedial instruction at no cost to students.
  • This can be done by using a voucher-based system to reduce financial hardship of the socio-economically disadvantaged.
  • Role of NGOs: Initiatives by NGO Pratham and Teach for India have been successful in providing supplementary tutoring to the underprivileged.
• Towards elimination in the long run: 
  • Recently introduced New Education Policy recognizes a need to ‘eliminate’ private tutoring.
  • The digital infrastructure set up in recent years could be used to facilitate tutoring provision across geographical boundaries to minimize learning loss.
  • There is an urgent need now to shift attention to the quality of teaching, pedagogy and curriculum so that students are able to meet their learning needs in school itself.