Out of the Shadows: The Global Intensification of Supplementary Education: Volume 22

To understand high demand for juku and yobiko, this chapter reviews the history, institutionalization, areas of innovation, and future of supplementary education in Japan.

Fieldwork in owner-operated supplementary education institutions.

The Japanese government has long publicly disavowed the existence of a large-scale supplementary education industry (juku and yobiko). Over the past 20 years or so, waves of moral panics regarding education (bullying, breakdown of classroom discipline, decline of academic abilities, school refusal, etc.) have led to a profound sense of insecurity among parents. While supplementary education has its roots in demographic and economic developments of the 1970s, its recent growth and further institutionalization into a mature business sector has been built on parents’ insecurity. This institutionalization marks Japanese supplementary education as a high-intensity system.

Juku is particularly interesting in comparative perspective since Japan contains a highly institutionalized form of “hyper-education.”

This chapter aims to provide the recent developments on the supplementary education system in Turkey. The national examinations for advancing to higher levels of schooling are believed to fuel the demand for Supplementary Education Centers (SECs). Further, we aim to understand the distribution of the SECs and of the secondary schools across the provinces of Turkey in order to evaluate the spacial equity considerations.

The evolution of the SECs and of the secondary schools over time are described and compared. The provincial distribution of the SECs, secondary schools, and the high school age population are compared. The characteristics of these distributions are evaluated to inform about spatial equity issues. The distribution of high school age population that attend secondary schools and the distribution of the secondary school students that attend SECs across the provinces are compared.

The evidence points out to significant provincial variations in various characteristics of SECs and the secondary schools. The distribution of the SECs is more unequal than that of the secondary schools. The provinces located mostly in the east and south east of the country have lower quality SECs and secondary schools. Further, the SEC participation among the secondary school students and the secondary school participation among the relevant age group are lower in some of the provinces indicating major disadvantages.

The review of the most recent developments about the SECs, examination and comparison of provincial distributions of the SECs and of the secondary schools are novelties in this chapter.

The chapter highlights some of the challenges of research on supplementary education, and indicates ways in which the challenges were tackled in one particular study on Chongqing Municipality, China.

The Chongqing research investigated the determinants of demand for shadow education by Grade 9 students, using a mixed-methods design. A questionnaire was used to collect data from students and parents on various background details and on the nature of the tutoring that they or their children had received. Interviews of a smaller number of respondents provided qualitative data that supplemented and illuminated the quantitative responses.

Different methodological decisions may have different implications. The sampling strategies in the study limited the generalizability but increased the feasibility of the fieldwork and comparability of findings. The top-down strategy of gaining access secured high response rates in the surveys, but to some extent decreased some participants’ willingness to provide information on gray areas. Interviews generated deep and detailed data, but some sensitive topics were intentionally avoided. Informal chats with note taking were constrained in depth and breadth by random time slots and venues, and some details were difficult to record. However, the approach expanded the horizons and facilitated the triangulation of information.

Discussion focuses on collection of data, and stresses the importance of cultural, social, and economic contexts. The chapter may be seen as a case study that provides insights into methods for researching forms of supplementary education. Methodological lessons from the fieldwork in Chongqing have wider relevance, particularly in settings where regular teachers provide extra private classes.

Building on my earlier work (Dang, 2007, 2008), this chapter provides an updated review of the private tutoring phenomenon in Vietnam including the reasons, scale, intensity, form, cost, and legality of these classes. In particular, this chapter offers a comparative analysis of the trends in private tutoring between 1998 and 2006 using all available data.

This chapter analyzes data from different sources, including (i) the 2006 Vietnam Household Living Standards Measurement Survey (VHLSS), (ii) the 1997–1998 Vietnam Living Standards Measurement Survey (VLSS), (iii) the 2008 Vietnam Household Testing Survey (VHTS), and (iv) local press in Vietnam. Quantitative methods are used.

Several (micro-)correlates are examined that are found to be strongly correlated with student attendance at tutoring, including household income, household heads’ education and residence areas, student current grade level, ethnicity, and household sizes. In particular, I focus on the last three variables that received little attention in the previous literature on the determinants of tutoring.

This chapter provides an updated and systematic review of the private tutoring phenomenon in Vietnam. Findings are highly relevant to the ongoing debates on private tutoring among all stakeholders in Vietnam, as well as policymakers/researchers in other countries. Suggestions are proposed on current gaps in the literature for future research.

This piece of research provides an overview on supplementary education in Brazil based on the available literature.

Literature review.

In a country plenty of social and educational contrasts, student failure and high repetition rates in basic education are the main factors of supplementary education flourishing. Additional factors are the quick expansion of access at all levels of schooling and the ascension of a new lower middle class that can afford to pay for supplementary tutoring. Tutors at their homes and in small offices are still one of the most common means for students who want to overcome their difficulties and improve their knowledge and skills. However, franchising outlets have grown since the 1980s and in particular the 1986 with the winds of globalization. Their most important branches are foreign languages and preparatory courses, especially for college entrance and public servant selection examinations. This branch of business has been financially very attractive for entrepreneurs. Official data on family budget show that families spend each year a significant amount of resources, impacting the sophistication and complexity of the supplementary education market. In sum, supplementary education is a result of quality deficiencies and inequity. At the same time, it increases the lack of equity between students from different human capital backgrounds.

Main limitation is that research on supplementary education in Brazil is still recent and scarce. On the other hand, till now, no public policy has paid attention to this phenomenon.

Public policy, research, and evaluation fields must consider the phenomenon of supplementary education in Brazil as an important variable contributing to inequity and to academic performance. This chapter calls attention to the need of increasing research on this issue.

As it is more valued and easily available to relatively more privileged social groups, supplementary education in Brazil contributes to increasing education inequity.

This chapter contributes to improving knowledge on supplementary education in Brazil, and its causes and implications. This portrait of the Brazilian scenario can also be instrumental for comparative education purposes at regional and global levels.

In this chapter we draw on research from Canada to develop a framework for understanding the variety of forms of supplementary education and their position within broader organization fields of education. The chapter asks: What is the nature and organizing logic of supplementary education in Canada? and, How does supplementary education relate to public schools in Canada?

Data come from a variety of secondary sources.

Distributed between three relatively autonomous settings – state, market, and nonprofit – supplementary education exhibits tremendous variety in its use value to parents, instructional content, and organizational form. Supplementary education is popular among Canadian parents and appears to be growing, yet it has failed to fundamentally alter the technical core of Canadian schooling, processes that stratify students, and child and family usage of their time or income. Supplementary education’s inability to penetrate these processes reflects its peripheral position within the broader organizational field of Canadian schooling.

The adoption of an organizational field approach generates new ways of thinking about determinants, forming and organizing logics of supplementary education both nationally and comparatively.

This chapter reflects the findings of a qualitative study of supplementary education in Western Australia, showing a commitment to understanding the broader social context of the individuals receiving educational assistance beyond their normal classroom activities.

The chapter is based on 10 semi-structured interviews conducted with university students who had utilised supplementary education services of a tutor made available through their schools and a variety of secondary sources.

The study also reveals that student access to university is not necessarily enhanced by private tutoring. It uncovers an under-researched component of the overall educational process in pointing to some of the emotional dimensions of the supplementary education industry. While tutoring did not appear to harm the chances of students making it to university, the beneficial effects of tutoring are not as clear-cut as some suggest they are. Overall the research suggests that, emotional support effects notwithstanding, perhaps we should not worry overly much about the inequalities brought by private tutoring as, yet again, the market shows itself to less efficient than some hope it to be and that others might fear it is.

Market-based supplementary education remains massively under-researched in Australia. While qualitative research is unable to address the effects of educational interventions definitively, the study adds important layers of complexity to questions about educational effectiveness and inequality. It helps validate concerns about social and economic inequalities; it also mollifies these concerns, partially because some of the programmes described here aim at addressing some basic inequalities, particularly those related to rural and remote education.

This chapter examines the policy context, characteristics, and challenges of supplementary tutoring in the United States, with a specific focus on the supplemental educational services (SES) mandate of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). This government-sponsored tutoring is particularly an interesting case of the United States, where privately funded tutoring is increasingly integrated into a public policy.

After introducing the details of SES program and examining major forces that influenced the introduction of this program, the chapter provides a summary on the scale of SES with a particular focus on a historical period when this program was most pervasive. It also discusses challenges of this policy and notes some recent policy changes due to NCLB reauthorization. The main sources of data for this study include two major federal reports on SES as well as the empirical studies on the effectiveness of supplementary tutoring in the United States.

An examination of policy contexts reveals that both federal and market forces contributed to the development of supplementary tutoring in the United States. While the number of tutoring providers and eligible students increased, evaluation studies have found either a small or insignificant effect of publicly funded tutoring. Communications among schools, families, and tutoring providers need to be more effective.

Although SES of the NCLB have exclusively been examined in the American context in the previous studies, this study suggests that other countries may learn from its policy context, practices, and challenges to reflect on supplementary tutoring in their own school systems.

The chapter examines the attendance, cost, structure and nature of demand for supplementary education in Germany.

This chapter reviews a variety of secondary sources.

Between 20 and 30 percent of German students use “Nachhilfe” (supplementary education). This chapter argues that a complex combination of perceptions of poor school quality and parents’ fears push German students and their parents into the supplementary education sector. It also finds that Nachhilfe providers have very effectively altered the nature of their services in light of these demands.

This chapter articulates the underlying “push” and “pull” factors that shape the nature and popularity of supplementary education in Germany.

This analysis addresses the question of how the goals motivating policies around markets for supplementary education are supported and reflected (or not) in the subsequent structures for those markets.

Drawing on policy documents and empirical research on these policies, we examine the policy contexts and market structures the low-intensity form of supplementary education (SE) seen in the United States relative to the high-intensity case of Korea – specifically, the supplementary educational services (SESs) of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the After School Programs (ASPs) in Korea, respectively.

The analysis finds that Korea is using school-based SE programs as an alternative to existing SE markets in order to mediate perceived free-market excesses, while the United States is subsidizing SE markets to address the negative consequences of inequitable schooling. Yet, even in different contexts and purposes, policymakers in both countries see a value to supplementary education as part of their overall education strategy, despite a lack of evidence on the effectiveness of these approaches. This commonality is reflective of the larger neoliberal approach, evident around the globe, of using market forces such as competitive incentives and parental choice to drive policy toward social objectives.

The significance of this analysis is the insight that these policy approaches, while different in context and policy specifics, represent an overall blurring of traditional distinctions between public and private organizations.

The purpose of this study is to measure the impact of family capital on the use of supplementary education.

Using logistic regression, it examines family-level determinants – SES, family structure, culture, educational aspirations, language, parental level of education and occupational prestige, and gender – among 17 nations, grouped by level of intensity.

Families with high levels of cultural capital are most likely to purchase supplementary education. This finding is interpreted as supporting the notion that family choice of supplementary education is a social reproduction mechanism in education.

This research helps us understand how and why families choose additional education, and how supplementary education can be an “unequalizer.” It will also inform future studies on national variations in supplementary education.