Private tutoring in Eastern Europe and Central Asia: policy choices and implications

Abstract

Private tutoring has become increasingly visible in Eastern Europe and Central Asia since the collapse of the socialist bloc in the early 1990s. Yet, this unprecedented growth of private tutoring, in its varied forms and arrangements, has remained largely unnoticed by policymakers in the region. Based on the data from the cross‐national studies of private tutoring in 12 countries, this explorative study examines factors driving the demand for private tutoring and discusses government responses to private tutoring in Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Lithuania, Mongolia, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine (research conducted in 2004–2005) and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan (research conducted in 2005–2006). The article analyzes various policy contexts and examines challenges that confront education stakeholders and policymakers as they formulate their responses to the rapidly‐spreading and constantly‐changing phenomenon of private tutoring. Finally, the article discusses whether, and to what extent, the existence of regulatory mechanisms influences the scope, nature, and implications of private tutoring across the countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Keywords:

• private tutoring
• post‐socialist transformations
• Eastern Europe
• Central Asia

Notes

1. Having just entered higher education institutions, first‐year students have fresh memories of their private tutoring experiences in school, and are unlikely to feel intimidated to talk about it. Although the university sample did not represent all students leaving secondary schools in the countries surveyed, the questionnaire also asked the respondents to estimate the scope of private tutoring among their classmates.

2. Medical, pharmaceutical, and art programs were excluded from the sample.

3. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a project of the OECD designed to provide policy‐oriented international indicators of the skills and knowledge of 15‐year‐old students in the domains of reading, mathematics, and science.

4. In Azerbaijan, for example, non‐attendance related to private tutoring is rarely documented in official school statistics. Interviews with students and teachers reveal that student absence is not usually recorded officially. Fearing that they will be reprimanded for school non‐attendance by the school authorities, students pay bribes to their teachers or school directors to conceal their absence (Silova and Kazimzade 2006).

5. In Tajikistan, there are only a few schools from the five pilot regions introducing per capita financing of education under a World Bank loan.