Private supplementary tutoring: a global phenomenon with far-reaching implications

By Mark Bray, Centre for International Research in Supplementary Tutoring (CIRIST), Faculty of Education, East China Normal University, and UNESCO Chair in Comparative Education, The University of Hong Kong.

The GEM Report team is much to be applauded for focusing on the roles of non-state actors in education in its 2021 edition – the consultation for which is still open. Among these actors are private tutors. They may be university students and others who work informally as private tutors, teachers in public schools who take additional roles as private tutors, and entrepreneurs who operate tutorial centres as stand-alone enterprises and chains.

Private supplementary tutoring is widely known as shadow education because much of it mimics mainstream schooling. Across the world, many millions of students receive some form of shadow education each day. The 2017/8 GEM Report estimated that the size of the market would surpass US$227 billion by 2022.

How are donors helping to end the gender imbalance in science?

Many countries, usually poorer ones, are still far even from the target of parity in primary and secondary education enrolment, let alone the more aspirational target of non-discrimination in all aspects of the education system. Girls’ education therefore remains a priority area for many actors in international development. But how do donors approach the main priorities?

When preparing our Gender Report in the run up to the G7 Ministerial Meeting on Education and Development last year, the GEM Report team and UNESCO sent a questionnaire to the aid agencies of the G7 countries, selected international organizations and NGOs, asking them to put forward projects for tackling 12 priorities in girls’ education. Today, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we outline how big the problem is, and summarise selected responses to the issue.

The consequences – and causes – of private school growth: a look at Nepal

This blog by Priyadarshani Joshi, Senior Analyst, Global Education Monitoring Report, is the first of a series of blogs in the run up to the 2021 GEM Report on non-state actors in education

Credit: Rene Edde

Few issues have garnered as much policy and research interest in the world as non-state education expansion. Nepal is my home country and country of research. It is where I chose to systematically analyse the consequences of private schooling for the education system’s equity and quality, which had not been explored so thoroughly in lower income countries before.

My research began with a series of exploratory interviews with public school principals and national education officials in Nepal. Most of the people I initially spoke to were government officials, who expressed mixed views on ‘private’ schooling – the main school choice available. Some officials spoke as parents and their right to choose; some discussed private schooling as providing better quality; while others argued that private schools were a bane for equity in society and talked of the need to promote government schooling.

With the help of external funding, approval from the government, and a data collection team, my research also included surveys of hundreds of public and private secondary schools around the country, data collection on private schooling characteristics from district offices, and interviews with a wide range of public sector stakeholders (national, district and local officials, and principals), private sector stakeholders (private school board members and principals), and parents.

Education Progress – the GEM Report’s new online interactive tool exploring progress made towards SDG 4

To mark International Education Day, the Global Education Monitoring Report has launched a new online interactive tool, Education Progress. Available in seven major languages, the site brings together data from various producers, notably the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, to explore the progress made towards SDG 4, the global education goal. It shows the progress being made by each country, as well as the bottlenecks and policy priorities from now until 2030 in five key themes, covered in brief below.

We invite you to explore the site, whose visualisations enable users to look at different countries, regions and education levels to uncover new ways of thinking about education progress around the world.

Access Globally, 88% of children complete primary school, 72% complete lower secondary school and 53% of youth complete upper secondary school

One of these issues includes the gravity of children who are over-age when they enroll. In Haiti and Liberia, for instance, almost one in ten of 20-year-olds are still in primary school, increasing the likelihood of further repeating grades, failing exams and eventually dropping out of school.

Using innovative and interactive data-visualisations, which can be changed by country, the site also shows the impact of population growth on out-of-school numbers. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, the primary school-aged population has more than doubled between 1990 and 2017. As a result, even though the rate of out-of-school children has more than halved during this period, the number of children out-of-school has barely changed.

Join the consultation on the 2021 GEM Report on non-state actors in education

We are extending the online consultation and expressions of interest for the 2021 GEM Report on non-state actors in education. The concept note for the Report is now available in English/ Français / Español  and Русский. Chinese and Arabic will follow soon.

Your views at this stage of our report process are vital to be sure we have as broad an understanding of your requirements when researching this issue, that we are aware of existing research already available, and of experts on the issue who might be able to contribute to the Report as it develops.

Online consultation: 

We would like to invite readers to:

• Provide substantive feedback to the proposed lines of research in the concept note
• Recommend interesting examples from around the world that illustrate the different roles non-state actors play in in different education systems
• Recommend potential areas of new research drawing on already established or previously unexplored sources of quantitative and qualitative data.

Building the Foundations: Highlights from ASER 2019 Early Years report

By Hannah-May Wilson, Education Partnerships Group

Image: Sandeep Sharma / ASER Centre

For the last fifteen years, Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) has provided an important and timely reminder that schooling does not equal learning. There is now wide acceptance that – despite spending at least five years in school, only half of all children in India can read a Grade 2 level text. The first ten years of ASER provided a fairly consistent picture of learning nationwide: learning levels were low; progress was slow; and ‘learning profiles’ (representing gains in learning per year of schooling) were relatively flat – meaning that years spent in school only equate to ‘time served’ and not ‘skills gained’. In 2016, ASER started an alternate-year cycle of assessment – conducting the ‘basic’ ASER every other year, using a different lens to examine new aspects of learning in the alternate years. ASER 2017 was the first alternate year. Known as ASER ‘Beyond Basics’, the survey focused on understanding more about the basic skills, enrollment status and aspirations of youth aged 14-18. On Tuesday, ASER launched the second alternate report in New Delhi, known as ASER ‘Early Years’.

Accreditation, certification and recognition of non-formal education in the Arab States

By Michael Cacich and Farida Aboudan, Educate A Child, a programme of the Education Above All Foundation

The recent Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report 2019: Migration, displacement and education: Building bridges, not walls estimates annual education spending at US$4.7 trillion worldwide. While education at all levels is inherently valuable to individuals and society at large, arguably it is especially useful when it is recognised and allows the individual to maximise future employment and learning opportunities wherever they are.

Photo by UNICEF USA – Lebanon

According to UNHCR, the world is now witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record, with 70.8 million people globally having been forced from home. Amongst them are nearly 25.9 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18.