Out of the shadows: the incidence and patterns of private tuition provision in Francophone West and Central Africa

ABSTRACT

Comprehensive national surveys of primary schools were conducted in nine Francophone West African countries in 2014. These surveys include information on private tutoring which enables in-depth analysis to be undertaken of both the overall incidence of tutoring provision among primary school students and teachers. The main conclusion of this study is that, among this group of countries, many of the broad generalisations and received wisdom concerning private tutoring in the sub-Saharan Africa either do not hold or need to be substantially qualified.

KEYWORDS:

• private supplementary tuition
• Central and West Francophone Africa
• incidence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The PASEC central survey team is based in Dakar, Senegal and operates under the organisational auspices of Conference des ministres de l’Education des Etats gouvernements de la Francophonie (Confemen).

2. The eight survey countries are Botswana, Eswatini, Namibia and South Africa in Southern Africa and Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique and Seychelles in East and Central Africa. All the surveys were conducted in 2013.

3. The second quinquennial PASEC survey round was conducted in 2019 which, once the data on private tutoring is analysed by the PASEC central survey team and/or is made publically available, will provide the first opportunity to assess comprehensively any significant trends in tuition provision in SSA during the last decade and the underlying reasons for these changes.

4. Burundi, was also surveyed in 2014 but since this country is not in West Africa it has not been included in this analysis. Six other FWCA countries belong to Confemen (DRC, CAR, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania), but did not participate in the 2014 PASEC surveys.

5. Primary school enrolments at private schools typically account for more than one-third of total enrolments in major cities in Anglophone Africa. In Nairobi, they are around one-half and in Kampala over 70% (see Bennell 2021).

6. For grade 2, teachers but not students are asked about their involvement in private tuition. The probable reason for this is that these children are considered to be too young to be able to answer them accurately.

7. It would have been useful to ascertain if grade 6 students had also received any private tuition in earlier grades so as to gauge the extent to which private tuition is primarily intended as a one-off, last minute input in order for students to improve their grade 6 examination performance or is viewed by parents as being necessary over longer periods of time.

8. The national profile incidence among the SACMEQ countries is also quite similar. In only four out of 13 countries (Botswana, Kenya, Mauritius and South Africa) were Grade 6 private tuition incidence rates higher than 25% in either 2007 or 2013.

9. The R-square value for tuition incidence and GDP per capita is 0.27 and it is 0.33 for tuition incidence and urbanisation.

10. However, the limited variation in the share of private secular enrolments means that this may not be true when this enrolment share is much higher, which is now commonly the case in cities across in SSA (see Bennell 2022).

11. A very similar pattern is observable with respect to gender enrolment rates for for-profit private schooling (See Bennell 2022).