The private tutoring phenomenon viewed through a comparative analysis

Abstract

Private tutoring, which we will analyse in this paper, has earned our attention due to several reasons: 1) the fact that it is practically a worldwide phenomenon, even though educational systems vary from country to country; 2) the fact that the repercussions of private tutoring on pupils’ results may provoke a reequation of equity and equality of opportunity principles; 3) the belief that the financial costs sustained by the pupils’ families, on one hand, and the rising number of private tutors available (working part-time or full-time), on the other, grant this phenomenon a considerable social and economic importance.
This approach privileges a qualitative analysis of the private tutoring scenario, with the aim of getting to know better some of its forms: its exercise as the sole employment of the tutor or as a supplement to the salary earned in another activity; private tutoring as a self-employment or employee activity; private tutoring that takes place in a local tutoring centre; private tutoring that takes place in a tutoring franchise, at a national or multinational level. By conducting a comparative analysis of the phenomenon, we will try to show how private tutoring is increasingly being carried out in organized businesses (tutoring centres), especially in big cities. These tutoring centres are supplementing or competing with schools increasingly using systematization and specialization parameters.