The private scenario: contributions to a comparative analysis

Alexandre Ventura António Neto-Mendes Jorge Adelino Costa Sara Azevedo

Department of Educational Sciences University of Aveiro Portugal

Comunicação na XXII CESE Conference – Changing knowledge and education: communities, information societies and mobilities. The World in Europe – Europe in the World, Granada, 3 a 6 de Julho de 2006, ISBN 84-8491665-0.

1 The private tutoring scenario: contributions to a comparative analysis1

Alexandre Ventura António Neto-Mendes Jorge Adelino Costa Sara Azevedo Department of Educational Sciences University of Aveiro Portugal

Abstract – Private tutoring, which we will analyse in this paper, has earned our attention due to several reasons: i) the fact that it is practically a worldwide phenomenon, even though educational systems vary from country to country; ii) the fact that the repercussions of private tutoring on pupils’ results may provoke a reequation of equity and equality of opportunity principles; iii) 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 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.

Introduction Private tutoring is a widespread and worldwide phenomenon. In fact, we think it is safe to say that the “worldwide expansion of schooling” (subject that has been studied, among others, by John W. Meyer and that has deserved, in Portugal, honours of an anthology organized by Nóvoa & Schriewer, 2000) has as a correlate the worldwide expansion of private tutoring. Even though the history of private tutoring is mostly still unwritten (which is not the case, as we know, with the history of schooling), it seems plausible to admit that the development of modern educational systems and the

1 Research carried out in the Project “Xplika - The private tutoring market, school effectiveness and ' performance”. Research team: Jorge Adelino Costa (coord.), António Neto-Mendes e Alexandre Ventura. Project financed by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Foundation for Science and Technology) and by the Programa Operacional Ciência e Inovação 2010 (Operational Program Science and Innovation 2010).

2 consolidation of the “school grammar” (Tyack & Tobin, 1994; Nóvoa, 1995), particularly the centrality achieved either by collective pedagogy (“teach all the students as they were one”) either by the examination system, created a propitious environment for the development of “alternative” educational responses in the form of private tutoring. Not aiming to be exhaustive, we will now present some arguments that prompted us to make the statement presented above: i) private tutoring permits (although not in every case) individualized teaching, which contrasts with the mass schooling offered by modern educational systems; ii) private tutoring may present itself as the space for homework doing, which shows yet another dimension of its possible functioning as a complement to the regular school system; iii) private tutoring can also have the function (perhaps one of the functions most appreciated by the clients of these services2) of exam preparation, the most important being the university entrance exams; iv) private tutoring can also perform the function (more social than academic, let it be acknowledged) of support to the family, offering services of spare time occupation, vital for a nuclear family, which is becoming smaller as time goes by, and with high rates of employment outside of the domestic sphere. To underline the importance of private tutoring in the educational context of the different societies seems one of those commonplaces that apparently nobody disputes. Nevertheless, that importance has not yet permitted this theme to occupy the space it deserves, be it from an academic, political, social or economical point of view. We have already expressed these concerns in prior studies (Costa, Ventura & Neto-Mendes, 2003; Costa, Neto-Mendes & Ventura, 2006), even if privileging different approaches from the ones that inspire the present article. The expression “shadow activity”, which is frequently associated with private tutoring, seems revealing of what we are stating. We have discussed until now the academic and social importance of the private tutoring phenomenon, but we would not like to forget its socio-economic impact in the Portuguese context. This can be seen in two perspectives: on the one hand, the individual effort demanded of each family and that cannot be neglected, known as it is the low salary level in Portugal in the context of the European Union; and on the other, the impact of private tutoring as an economic activity, involving thousands of tutors, to whom it is a main or part-time activity – although there are no studies about it, it is

2 We do not possess empirical evidence that permits us to support a judgement of this kind in what concerns the Portuguese situation. There are, nevertheless, studies being carried out in the context of this project, which will contribute to a deeper and richer understanding of this topic.

3 commented by many parents that pay for private tutoring that many tutors are reluctant in delivering a receipt for their services, a receipt that can be added to other education expenses to be included in the family’s tax returns (IRS – Tax on Individual Revenues, in Portuguese). These informal economic practices “feed” the so-called “parallel economy”, which according to some studies’ estimates represents between a quarter and a fifth of the Portuguese GDP. From what was said above a main idea stands out, which we would like to emphasize: when we talk about private tutoring we have to move away from the idea that it is a simple topic. We are facing, in fact, a complex phenomenon, represented by a diversified set of practices that we have already tried to illustrate in analysing its penetration in the different continents (Costa, Neto-Mendes & Ventura, 2006). We will try in the following pages to focus our analysis in this diversified set of practices that show us, and probably increasingly, the assertion of a social occupation – that of the tutor – that finds, at least in Portugal, a fertile ground for its expansion in the access blockage to the education system of certified that due to this situation see private tutoring as a form of alternative employment (Neto-Mendes, 2004).

Private tutoring and its different forms As we mentioned in the introduction, private tutoring can be provided in several forms. The providers can be teachers or students, working on a self-employed basis or as employees of a commercial structure that pays them a salary (Glasman and Besson, 2004: 53). Private tutoring can be provided on a one-to-one basis, in the home of the tutee or of the tutor, in small groups of five or six students, in a private tutoring centre or in a school classroom after regular school hours (Glasman and Besson, 2004: 53). In some countries private tutoring is provided in large classrooms or even in big conference rooms equipped with television screens (Bray, 1999: 21). The size of the private tutoring business ranges from the small not-declared individual activity to the big company that operates internationally and is quoted on the stock market (Glasman and Besson, 2004: 53). “The curricula used by the tutors may be tightly structured or they may be somewhat ad hoc and dependent on the specific needs of tutees at particular times” (Bray and Kwok, 2003: 612). We are going to explore some of these different forms of private tutoring in the following pages.

4 Private tutoring undertaken as a secondary activity Private tutoring undertaken on an individual basis, in which the tutor provides tutoring to only one (or a small group of students) is the oldest and most traditional form of private tutoring. For example, Ireson (2004: 110) indicates that in the United Kingdom private tutoring has a history as a respectable employment for university students looking for financial support and for teachers wishing to supplement their salaries. We believe this to be the case in several countries. In this case, private tutoring is undertaken as a supplement to a main activity that the tutors hold, it is provided in their free time, and its revenues are not, in many situations, declared to tax entities. Private tutoring is, in this situation, a “shadow activity” as what is earned by carrying it out is beyond the reach of taxing services (Bray, 1999: 28). As we are told by Hrynevych et al. (2005) this is a very common occurrence when private tutoring is provided on an individual basis. Private tutoring in this form operates, therefore, in an informal way, without contracts or affiliation to any type of organization or professional order. According to the Regional Association for Professionalized Training in the Canary Islands (Asociación Regional Canaria de Formación Profesionalizada - ARCAP) private tutoring that is undertaken as a secondary activity, not subjected to taxes, and not even declared to the Social Security services, is a submerged economical activity and is being dealt with in a permissive way (ElDia.es, 2005). This Association claims that this kind of private tutoring generates 28.5 million euros each year in the Canary Islands, and because these revenues are not declared an amount of 4 million euros is withheld from the public treasury (ElDia.es, 2005). The president of this Association presented a denunciation to the Work Inspection Office asking it to investigate the activities of the individuals responsible for almost a hundred advertisements for private tutoring and he believes that in the Canary Islands around 1.500 teachers of the public school system of different levels provide this type of services (ElDia.es, 2005). This Association argues that this form of tutoring poses unfair competition to legal private tutoring businesses, and condemns especially the teachers who are employees of the public school system and provide this form of private tutoring at the same time (ElDia.es, 2005). As we have seen, in many situations, private tutoring is provided by teachers or students wishing to have some extra earnings. On the other hand, for example, in some countries with a difficult economic situation, in countries where the government is

5 unable to assure the normal functioning of the school system (not being able to pay the teachers regularly, for instance), in countries where the teaching profession is not highly regarded, teachers, due to their low salaries, provide tutoring because they need this income to survive. Bray (1999: 26-30) tells us that in countries going through economic difficulties, like some countries in Eastern Europe, this phenomenon is quite widespread. For example, Baimova (2003) mentions that in Azerbaijan, many teachers look for a second job and/or other means to supplement their pay. These means may include private tutoring, special classes and extracurricular activities (Baimova, 2003). Sometimes, in this case, private tutoring may be associated to a form of corruption, as private tutoring sessions will function as a bribe. Janashia (2004) tells us that in Georgia, a former member of the Soviet Union, corruption involving tutoring manifests itself through a system of private tutors that prepare students for the university entrance exams, but in fact the money paid for tutoring functions as a bribe for students to assure their entrance to the university department of their choice. Leshukov (2005) tells us that also in Russia many University professors provide tutoring to students wishing to enter the university departments where they teach, and in this way the private tutoring sessions function as a sort of indirect bribe. Another form of corruption connected to private tutoring is the one in which some teachers, providing private tutoring for a fee to the same students they are responsible for in the formal education system, may resort to different objectionable techniques to guarantee that they have a clientele for their services. Biswal (1999: 222) mentions that in many developing countries it is very frequent to find teachers that tutor their own students for a fee. This author tells us that this is due to their low salaries but also to the fact that what happens in schools can only be verified/monitored in a very imperfect way, which encourages teachers to teach poor quality lessons to produce a demand for tutoring sessions that they will provide to their own students (Biswal, 1999: 222). Bray (1999: 37) reports that this situation can be found in countries as different as Cyprus, Indonesia, Niger and Russia and that this circumstance is considered very problematic. This is due to the fact that some teachers in this case will resort to the techniques mentioned above, for example, deliberately slowing down their presentation of contents in class so that the curriculum is not fully explored, assuring in this way that there is a demand for their services as tutors, as the students will need to cover the contents not discussed in class (Bray, 1999: 37-38). Wanyama and Njeru (2004) mention that this happens in Kenya, where some teachers may also omit a part of the

6 curriculum in their regular classes, and then offer to teach it in private tutoring sessions. Critics of this situation also point out to the element of blackmail that may be involved in this case, as teachers can let their students know, directly or indirectly, that the students who do not attend the tutoring sessions provided by the will be penalized in their scores or other activities (Bray, 1999: 37 e 38). Teachers may also fail their students on purpose to create a market for their tutoring services (Bray, 1999: 37 e 38). Some critics of this situation argue, like Hrynevych et al. (2005) that private tutoring provided by teachers to their own students should be banned. In Egypt, for example, the government tried to fight against the tutoring provided by teachers working in the public school system by making this form of tutoring illegal (World Bank, 2002: 42). Nevertheless, Assaad and Elbadawy (2004: 2) tell us that these sessions continue to be a widespread practice in this country.

Private tutoring undertaken as a main activity In many countries the number of private tutoring businesses is rising, competing with the tutoring provided by individual teachers or students, which is, as we have seen, the most traditional form of tutoring. As we mentioned above, tutoring provided on an individual basis is in many situations undertaken as a secondary activity, which implies that its providers only exercise it on a part-time basis. Miron (2005) mentions that according to the President of the National Tutoring Association of the United States of America the majority of private tutors works part-time but that the number of full-time businesses is growing. Ireson (2004: 110) tells us that in the United Kingdom private tutoring is usually provided on an individual basis, but that private tutoring centres also exist. In some countries private tutoring companies are already a big business, with many individuals dedicating themselves entirely to this activity, either as full-time employees at a tutoring centre or as self-employed entrepreneurs that own one of these centres. For example, we are told by Antoninis and Tsakloglou (2001: 199) that in Greece one of the main providers of private tutoring are university graduates from humanities and science faculties, who organize themselves in cram schools (name given in some countries to private tutoring centres) known as frontisteria. Antoninis and Tsakloglou (2001: 199) tell us that the demand for out-of-school help for university

7 entrance exams candidates has led to the development of private tutoring as a parallel educational system. The competitiveness of university entrance exams and the desire to succeed in them has led to a rise in the demand for private tutoring and resulting, as Tsakloglou and Cholezas (2005: 5 and 6) observe, in the increase of the number of cram schools. According to Tsakloglou and Cholezas (2005: 6) “most upper secondary education students attend such crammer schools; even those from poor households”. Psacharopoulos (2002: 10) mentions that over one billion Euros is spent on these cram schools each year, which is more than the state spends on secondary schools. It seems that a similar situation occurs in Turkey. Tansel and Bircan (2004: 5 and 6) indicate that in Turkey private tutoring is used to prepare students for the entrance examinations of private high schools and special high schools (for instance, the Anatolian High Schools, where lessons are taught in English and the Science High Schools) and to supplement the teaching students receive at their basic and secondary schools, but that it is mainly connected with the competitive university entrance exams existing in this country. Tansel and Bircan (2004: 4) add that the institution of these university entry exams in the 1970s has led to an increase in the number of private tutoring centres, which prepare its clients for this examination. These authors declare that although other forms of private tutoring also exist in Turkey (individual tutoring dispensed by a teacher either at his/her own or the client’s house, or tutoring provided by school teachers on school grounds after normal school hours), these private tutoring centres are the most common form (Tansel and Bircan, 2004: 5). Tansel and Bircan (2004: 5) further explain that these centres, called dersane in Turkish, have sites all over the country and are “school-like organizations where professional teachers tutor in a classroom setting”. In Brazil many students attend private tutoring centres called cursinhos that operate in a similar way to the Turkish tutoring centres. These centres are directed to the students preparing for the university entrance exams (Bacchetto, 2003: 1). In fact, Nascimento (2003) says that these cursinhos are the illegitimate children of the public university entrance exams (called vestibular in Brazil) constituting themselves gradually in a large education system, parallel to the formal one, stronger and more “important” than the latter. This author claims that these cursinhos have become a “necessity” to achieve university entrance (Nascimento, 2003). According to research mentioned in the newspaper article, “72% of university’s new students attended a cursinho” (our translation) in 2005; 72 in every 100 students that gain admittance to the University of

8 São Paulo attended a cursinho and only 27% of students did not attend one (Fernandes, 2005). The importance given to attending these tutoring centres to obtain good results in the university entrance exams has given rise to the development in Brazil of several “alternative” (also called popular or community) cursinhos. These cursinhos, which provide tutoring for a reduced or even symbolic fee, are directed to students from less economically favoured backgrounds that do not possess the necessary means to attend a commercial tutoring centre. In 2001, around 800 of these centres existed, which served almost 60.000 students (Filho and Rodrigues, 2001). is known as a country that utilizes private tutoring in a large scale and it seems that its use is on the increase. For example, Ihlwan (2000) tells us that in 1990 South Koreans spent $8.3 billion on private tutoring and that nowadays they spend more than $26 billion. In many South Korean households an average of 700/1.000 dollars a month goes to tutoring and cram school lessons (Card, 2005). This author further adds that South Koreans “are proud of how many supplementary classes their kids take, making it a point of pride that their child is tutored by a former SKY [collective nickname for the three most prestigious universities in South Korea: Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University] grad [graduate], or goes to the cram school with the best reputation” (Card, 2005). Due to the importance given to after-school tutoring, Ihlwan (2000) tells us that in South Korea cram schools are becoming big business. According to this author, around 6 million children, mostly between 6 and 12, are using practice-testing services these days, which take in $2.7 billion yearly in sales (Ihlwan, 2000). For example, in 2000, Daekyo Co., a private tutoring business, was sending 13.000 tutors to the homes of its 2.1 million subscribers once a week and Jongro Academy, another tutoring company, had 4.500 students who paid an average of $310 a month (Ihlwan, 2000). In a study conducted by Bray and Kwok (2003: 615) in Hong Kong, concerning private tutoring, the authors found that the “greatest proportions of pupils attended large-scale examination-oriented mass tutoring classes rather than individual or small- group sessions, and mass tutoring became particularly popular in the higher grades. Thus 72.4% of Secondary 6-7 pupils received large-scale mass tutoring, compared with 33.0% of Secondary 4-5 pupils”. As we can see by these examples, in many countries the use of private tutoring centres is becoming widespread, and may even be on the way to become the preferred way of receiving tutoring. These businesses are generating large revenues, as the

9 numbers of students attending them is increasing. This trend, we believe, is seen by some teachers as an interesting business opportunity and leads them to open their own tutoring centres, becoming in this way self-employed and dedicating themselves exclusively to this activity. The setting up of their own business may seem particularly attractive to teachers that receive low salaries and to unemployed teachers that are not able to secure a placement at a school. Although we consider that the idea of opening a tutoring centre will primarily attract teachers, as they are connected to education, other individuals, who do not necessarily possess teaching qualifications, may also invest in this business. In fact, and as Aurini (2004: 478) points out, these tutoring entrepreneurs can come from very diverse backgrounds, such as, business, geography, psychology and physics. This is due to the fact that in many countries, as Aurini (2004: 483) explains, tutoring businesses are “not expected to conform to government-imposed education mandates”. Therefore, tutoring business can also be run by individuals who do not come from an educational background. These tutoring businesses, besides creating a position for the individual(s) that decide to open them, also generate employment for other individuals that collaborate in the functioning of the tutoring centre as tutors. The individuals that work in these centres may be employed on a part-time basis or on a full- time basis, dedicating themselves entirely to tutoring. Some individuals open small, local tutoring centres and others prefer to open franchises of well-known tutoring businesses, as some tutoring companies have grown to become large national or even multinational businesses, offering franchise opportunities. In the United States of America, some observers say the No Child Left Behind Act signed into law by President Bush in 2002 is leading to an increase in the number of tutoring centres and in the revenues received by established businesses, especially the franchises of well-known companies. As we are told by Primont and Domazlicky (2005: 77) the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act “is an ambitious plan that aims to improve academic performance of all public school students. It places increased emphasis on standardized test scores for evaluating student and school progress. Schools must make «adequate yearly progress» in raising student achievement, or, face possible sanctions”. These authors further explain that “a school that fails to achieve «adequate yearly progress» in the second consecutive year must provide public school choice and pay transportation services for any student who wishes to transfer to another school. In the third consecutive year, the

10 school is also required to provide supplemental education services3 — tutoring in reading and mathematics — as selected by the students’ parents in cooperation with the school district” (Primont and Domazlicky, 2005: 78). In what concerns who supplies these supplemental educational services, the states have to choose a group of tutoring providers and then draw up a contract with a subset of those providers (Gorman, 2004). The providers can be public or private organizations and school districts themselves can serve as providers (Gorman, 2004). After this process is complete, districts have to notify parents of their options and parents can enrol their children with the provider of their choice (Gorman, 2004). We are told by Boehner (2005) that according to the U.S. Department of Education, “more than 1600 supplemental service providers have been approved by the states since NCLB was enacted”. Gorman (2004) mentions that in 2004, also according to the U.S. Department of Education, private firms represented 72 percent of providers and of that about a quarter of the providers were part of the public school system. Trejos (2004) states that a “growing number of public school districts across the country are setting up their own tutoring services to vie for the federal dollars”. In Gorman’s (2004) opinion “at present, large corporate providers and school districts seem to be ruling the marketplace”. We are told by this author that within “this new marketplace, school districts hold enormous power as a result of their dual role — as both program administrator and potential provider” (Gorman, 2004). The large corporate providers seem to be the most popular with parents and students, due, for example, to brand recognition, as several of these tutoring businesses have been tutoring students for many years (Gorman, 2004). These companies also seem to have “the potential to garner a large market share” as some of them have been approved in 20 to 30 states (Gorman, 2004). This author gives us the example of a tutoring company, Club Z, which in the 2003–04 school year was approved in 25 states and served 7.000 children as a No Child Left Behind supplemental education services provider (Gorman, 2004). Gorman (2004) adds that this company anticipates serving around 10.000 students through supplemental services within two years. Another example is given by Elliott (2005: 17), who states that according to an article in the Baltimore Sun, “Catapult’s [a NCLB approved tutoring provider in many US states] No

3 “The term «supplemental educational services» refers to extra help in academic subjects, such as reading, language arts and mathematics, provided free-of-charge to certain students. These services are provided outside the regular school day — before or after school, on weekends or in the summer” (U.S. Department of Education information pamphlet, w.d.).

11 Child Left Behind revenue in the first half of 2004 jumped to more than $21 million, up from less than $3 million in the first half of 2003”. According to Gorman (2004), “as this marketplace matures, both experts and a number of providers say two big winners will emerge: corporate providers and school districts. Those organizations possess the greatest resources, the greatest capacity to reach parents and children, and the scale to absorb the unpredictability inherent in this marketplace”. Saulny (2005) reports that according to market analysts “propelled by the No Child Left Behind law, the federally financed tutoring industry has doubled in size in each of the last two years” and has “the potential to become a $2 billion-a-year enterprise”. Some supplemental education providers are paid as much as $1.997 per child enrolled in its programs (Saulny, 2005). “A nationwide survey of 91 school districts and 30 state education departments by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now found that most were paying between $900 to $1.700 per student in 2003-04” (Elliott, 2005: 16). Saulny (2005) adds that the desire to receive a share of the funds allocated for supplemental educational services had led some tutoring companies to offer parents prizes, such as computers and gift certificates, as an inducement for them to sign up for their services. Furthermore, “hundreds of new companies and community groups have been established to take advantage of the law, joining more established names in and tutoring like the Princeton Review, Kaplan and the Huntington Learning Center” (Saulny, 2005). “Experts say these groups will earn as much as $200 million this school year [2005], with about 30 percent of that going to the big national companies. And the revenue is only expected to grow, as more schools are labelled as failing under national law and more parents take advantage of tutoring programs. Only about 11 percent of eligible students are now being tutored” (Saulny, 2005). Gordon (2003: 3) believes that the No Child Left Behind Act “has legally recognized the proven effectiveness and popularity of tutoring across the United States”. This author adds this Act has had two major impacts on how private tutoring is seen (Gordon, 2003: 3). Firstly, the No Child Left Behind Act “has begun the institutionalization of tutoring”, as before this Act private tutoring was viewed “at best as «homework helpers», or «do-gooder community/student volunteer programs» or as an elitist activity, something that only affluent families could afford (Gordon, 2003: 3). In this author’s opinion, professional tutoring “can be of real assistance as a short-term learning experience to help students learn how to learn, improve specific academic

12 subject skills, and achieve more day-to-day in the classroom, as well as coach parents on how to support learning at home” and that the NCLB Act has forced educators and parents to realize this (Gordon, 2003: 3). Secondly, “NCLB has begun to answer the important question, «What is a professional tutor?»” (Gordon, 2003: 3). This author considers that before this Act anyone could claim to be a tutor and that NCLB is “the first step in a process to clearly define who is and who is not a «professional tutor»” (Gordon, 2003: 3).

The industry of tutoring: some examples of a global approach Beside the examples that we have already refer, there is an increasingly number of corporations dedicating their investments to a global approach of tutoring, securing new markets and diversifying their services and products in order to meet or to create needs in their actual or potential clients. In many countries the investment in private tutoring franchises is growing. Some of the tutoring companies have become so important that they have expanded their scope beyond the borders of the country where they were first established, becoming tutoring multinationals. For example, the Baltimore based company Educate, Inc. provides private tutoring through several brands including Catapult Learning, Sylvan Learning Center and Schülerhilfe (http://educate-inc.com). Catapult Learning partners directly with schools and school districts to provide supplemental education services (http://www.catapultlearning.com/). In the 2003-2004 school year, through its Education Station program, Catapult delivered NCLB supplemental educational services to approximately 16.700 students (http://www.catapultlearning.com/). Sylvan Learning Centers has over 900 locations, situated not only in the United States but also in Canada, Guam and Hong Kong (http://www.educate.com). The Schülerhilfe company became part of Educate, Inc. in 1998 and has more than 1.000 tutoring centres in Germany and Austria (http://www.schuelerhilfe.de). Another example is Acadomia, a company created in France that provides private tutoring in the students’ homes, which now possesses 75 locations in France (http://www.acadomia.fr) and has expanded to Germany and Spain. In Germany it has 4 agencies (http://www.acadomia.de) and in Spain 23 (and several new openings scheduled) (http://www.acadomia.es).

13 Due to the growth of national and multinational tutoring businesses, and their successful franchising strategies, in some countries and situations there has been a development in how people approach private tutoring. Private tutoring is commonly viewed as an activity that supplements the teaching done at school, and in which the tutor helps the student understand what was taught in class or helps him him/her prepare for a test or exam. Some of these businesses differ from “traditional” private tutoring because they go beyond homework help and test preparation and offer different educational objectives, focusing on, as Aurini and Davies (2003: 6) mention, the development of long-term abilities and the building of skills. Many of these tutoring businesses, as we are told by Aurini (2003: 15; 2004: 483), develop their own curriculum and placements tests, the manuals and workbooks used in the tutoring sessions and evaluation methods. Aurini (2003: 3) asserts that some of these tutoring businesses because they offer many different services and have distanced themselves from the role of supplementing what is taught in schools have come to call themselves ‘learning centres’. The services offered by learning centres include, as Aurini (2003: 3) mentions, “preschool programs, math and reading programs, writing and public speaking programs, and in some instances, courses for accreditation”. These learning centres offer in this manner and, as is argued by Aurini (2004: 483), an alternative and not a supplement to what is taught at school. An example of a learning centre is a company called Kumon. This business was started 50 years ago in Japan and nowadays there are 3.7 million students studying at more than 25.000 Kumon Centers in 43 countries (http://www.kumon.com). In the official North American website of this company we are told that “Kumon is an after-school math and reading program that employs a unique learning method designed to help each child develop the skills needed to perform to his or her full potential” (http://www.kumon.com). Furthermore, “the heart of the Kumon learning system is a curriculum of more than twenty clearly defined skill levels and hundreds of short assignments spanning material from preschool all the way up to college” and with each assignment the child “advances in small, manageable increments” (http://www.kumon.com). As we can see, this company has developed its own learning method and curriculum, which implies that it does not follow the programme of study set in regular school. In fact, “Kumon uses neither a classroom nor a tutoring model, but rather a guided «self-motivated-learning» approach” (http://www.kumon.com). The levels the students are placed at the centres are not connected with the grade they attend

14 at school but with the results the students get in a placement test administered at Kumon. At the basis of the Kumon program is the use of worksheets. The worksheets assigned to the student “provide an example illustrating the concept to be learned. Then a simple exercise modeled after the example is given. Each new assignment is slightly more challenging than the last” (http://www.kumon.com). Before the student “can advance from one assignment to the next, the material should be completed with a perfect score within a prescribed period of time. All work is graded and the results recorded” to establish when the student “has a total command of the material and is ready to move on” (http://www.kumon.com). “An assignment that takes too long or is completed with too many errors is repeated until mastered” (http://www.kumon.com). The worksheets students use are assigned daily, but most Kumon students only attend a Kumon Centre twice a week (http://www.kumon.com). This means that five days a week the worksheets must be solved at home, a task that usually takes about twenty minutes per day (http://www.kumon.com). This website also tells us that many of students who enrol at Kumon wish “to stay above grade level and obtain more challenging material than they are receiving at school in pursuit of their academic aspirations” (http://www.kumon.com). In what concerns the tutors at Kumon, who are called Instructors, we are told that “a background in teaching and a college degree are helpful, but not essential”, and that the most important factor for an individual wishing to work at Kumon is an “interest in and commitment to helping children” in the community (http://www.kumon.com). Kumon centres have a club called Kumon Cosmic Club, which “allows students to collect points that may be redeemed for prizes based on their progress in the Kumon Reading and Math Programs. The program encourages students to reach Kumon learning milestones by rewarding them with Cosmic Club Points and Collectible Cosmic Club Cards as they excel in their Kumon studies” (http://www.kumon.com). The points the students collect can acquire them, for example, bookstore’s gift certificates, camcorders or cameras (http://www.kumon.com). As we can see by the description of this tutoring company, it does not aim at supplementing what the students are taught at school, as it does not offer homework help, test preparation or even seems interested in knowing what the students are learning at school but by establishing its own objectives, curriculum and creating its own teaching materials, seems to present itself as a separate entity, with a programme

15 and methods as valid as the ones used in regular schools. In this way we can almost see it as competing with the regular school, as it claims to foster, for example, “a mastery of the basics of reading and math”, a role traditionally held by schools.

Private tutoring in Portugal In Portugal, the unofficial type of private tutoring discussed above, in which the tutors do not declare their revenues to the fiscal authorities, has a significant share of users, but its official counterpart is becoming increasingly larger, as can be seen by the fact that new tutoring centres open on a daily basis (Costa, Neto-Mendes and Ventura, 2006: 11). This tells us that the use of private tutoring centres in Portugal is growing. For example, in research being conducted by the authors mentioned above, they found that in the city where this research is mainly being carried out, which is a medium-sized city for Portuguese standards, 20 tutoring centres existed in early 2006 (Costa, Neto- Mendes and Ventura, 2006: 12). One of the reasons for the increase of the number of tutoring centres opening in Portugal is due to the existence of a large number of unemployed teachers, who (due to low availability) will not be able to secure a school placement in the near future and are therefore available as qualified workers to assume a new social occupation commonly known as a “tutor” (Costa, Neto-Mendes and Ventura, 2006: 11). It seems, in fact, that in Portugal a rising number of teachers is devoting its time to private tutoring (Neto- Mendes, 2004: 31). The difficulty of getting a school placement that has been experienced in Portugal in the last few years (motivated by the low birth rate and accompanying decrease of the number of students, classes and need for teachers) has led private tutoring to become the main activity undertaken by many teachers, and even, in some cases, the only professional activity they undertake, as they realize they will never be able to secure a school placement (Neto-Mendes, 2004: 32). In fact, even though there is no research about it, private tutoring seems to be, for some teachers, the first contact they have with teaching (Neto-Mendes, 2004: 32). The lack of teaching positions in schools has led to a development of self-employment, as teachers decide to open their own businesses, and create, therefore, their own employment, many times, in the form of private tutoring centres (Neto-Mendes, 2004: 32). In Portugal the use of tutoring franchises is not yet widespread. There are, nevertheless, some companies using this strategy that are growing rapidly. This is the case, for example, of Mathanasium, a learning centre dedicated to math, based in the

16 United States and that now has several franchise locations in Portugal (http://www.mathnasium.com.pt) and of Tutor Time, also a company based in the United States and that has recently opened its first Portuguese centre (http://www.tutortime.pt). National businesses are experiencing success as well. We can point out the example of Teen Academy, with 4 centres (http://www.teenacademy.pt) and Academia do Estudante (Student Academy), also with several centres across the country (http://www.academiadoestudante.com).

Conclusion The information presented in this text is sufficient to support the idea that private tutoring, as a relevant social activity, is far from being a simple and linear phenomenon. Its complexity is due to new political, social, economic and cultural conditions, which determine significant changes in the way society views everything that is related to schooling. Even though this is not the theme of this article, the growth of private tutoring and the richness (read diversity) of its offer seem to illustrate well the assertion of an “educational market”4 to which we do not seem to always give the attention it deserves. This very dynamic scenario challenges educational systems all over the world and creates uncomfortable questions in what concerns the equity and fairness of formal education. This situation calls to mind George Orwell’s celebrated sentence in “Animal Farm” (1945)5, All students are equal but some are more equal than others. With this growing education industry catalysed in several countries, openly or not, by government policies, students’ conditions to succeed are not the same. Furthermore, at the same time, at this pace, government educational systems will be in jeopardy in a few decades.

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20 Websites consulted: http://educate-inc.com http://www.catapultlearning.com/ http://www.educate.com http://www.schuelerhilfe.de http://www.acadomia.fr http://www.acadomia.de http://www.acadomia.es http://www.kumon.com http://www.mathnasium.com.pt http://www.teenacademy.pt http://www.academiadoestudante.com http://www.tutortime.pt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm

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