The impact of private lessons on teachers' esteem in the community

Abstract

Within the Maltese Educational System there is an increasing awareness of the rise in the incidence of private tuition, and its effects on pupils, parents and teachers. The main thrust of this work is to establish the attitudes that pupils, parents and teachers have about private lessons. Attempts are also made to determine whether this local educational phenomenon has any significance on the community's perceptions about teachers as professionals. In order to achieve this aim, data was collected by means of a questionnaire survey from the following sample of subjects: 357 middle-stream Primary State School pupils, 285 parent pairs of the pupils involved in the study and 75 Primary State School teachers. From the results it was found that 39.2 percent of the pupils attended private tuition, while only 13.3 percent of the teachers were giving private tuition at the time of the study. Many teachers (80 percent) were of the opinion that parents and pupils perceive private tutors as being more experienced, competent, and skilled in preparing pupils for examinations than those teachers who are not engaged in private tuition. However these perceptions are in fact contrary to what the pupils and parents stated. A substantial percentage of teachers (84.6 percent) strongly sustained that the increased incidence of private tuition is lowering teachers' professionalism.