Taming the Wild Horse of Shadow Education: The Global Expansion of Private Tutoring and Regulatory Responses

Zhang analyses the phenomenon of private supplementary tutoring from a global perspective. The expansion of such tutoring alongside schooling is among the striking global shifts since the turn of the century. In many countries over half of the relevant cohorts of children receive private tutoring, with that proportion in some locations exceeding 80%. The sector has far-reaching implications for social inequalities, (in)efficiencies in educational processes, study burdens on students, family finances, innovation, and employment. Yet greatly-needed government regulations have typically been slow to catch up with the phenomenon.
Commentary in the volume juxtaposes countries with strong regulations with counterparts having weak regulations. Conceptually, the book considers forces changing the roles of multiple stakeholders, including governments, entrepreneurs, teachers, families and students.
A useful read for students and researchers interested in comparative education and governance.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Wei Zhang is a Professor in the Institute of Curriculum and Instruction (ICI) of East China Normal University (ECNU), Shanghai, and the Executive Director of the Centre for International Research in Supplementary Tutoring (CIRIST). She is a member of China’s Ministry of Education expert committee on private tutoring, and director of the expert committee on materials for tutoring and lifelong education in Shanghai Municipal Education Commission. She is also an Honorary Professor at Aarhus University in Denmark. In 2020 she was a Fellow in UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report team. She obtained her doctorate from the University of Hong Kong, where she subsequently managed its Comparative Education Research Centre (CERC). She has published extensively in the domain of shadow education from an international comparative perspective, and has conducted fieldwork on the theme in Cambodia, Denmark, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Myanmar.