Charting private tutoring in Cyprus : a socio-demographic perspective

Abstract

Cyprus is one of the European countries where the phenomenon of shadow education is particularly widespread. The political establishment, the Press and the teacher unions have repeatedly referred to shadow education as an anathema or a ‘cancer’ which makes public education and families suffer. Legally, shadow education consists of three distinct types of institutions: the privately-owned, the state-controlled and the illegal which operate underground. This study uses government survey data to investigate the nature of the phenomenon. We found that the industry of private tutoring is particularly widespread in secondary education although the phenomenon is also very visible in primary education. Contrary to the expectations of current literature, the socioeconomic status of the families is not significantly related to the decision of households to engage into private tuition. We discuss the educational as well as the social perspective of our findings.