PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Leadership in Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1602842
This article is part of the Research TopicThe right to education and addressing inequalities: Examining new forms of privatisation, impact of digitalisation and learning in crisis situationsView all articles
Regulatory Gaps in Private Supplementary Tutoring: International Patterns and Implications for Social Protection
Provisionally accepted
- The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, SAR China
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The present century has brought marked expansion of private supplementary tutoring across countries of all income levels. Tutoring is provided in diverse modes by commercial enterprises, full-time teachers seeking extra incomes, and informal suppliers ranging from senior-secondary students to retirees.As tutorial enrolment rates rise, receipt increasingly becomes a necessity for keeping up with peers. However, this creates inequalities: the lowest-income families are excluded entirely, while those slightly higher in the income hierarchy cannot access the quantities and qualities of tutoring accessed by wealthier families.These patterns also raise multi-layered issues. At the level of the child are matters of the quality of tutoring and basic safety in inadequately-supervised environments. At the parental level are matters of fees, honesty in marketing, etc.; and at the broad social level are inequalities that challenge what UNESCO has called a desirable social contract. All these dimensions require effective regulation.
Keywords: Human Rights, private tutoring, Regulations, Shadow education, social inequalities
Received: 30 Mar 2025; Accepted: 12 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bray. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mark Bray, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, SAR China
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