Event

Supplemental education, or shadow education, is a salient educational phenomenon with considerable implications for social reproduction of advantage and educational expansion. Focusing primarily on fee-paying out-of-school classes, this study analyzed the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment data, combined with the country specific information on socioeconomic, cultural, and institutional features, and showed that about one third of all students from in 64 countries/economies across the world use this pure form of shadow education, on average for four hours a week, plus a substantial proportion of students use other forms of shadow education (i.e., private tutoring and after-school lessons) including using two or more services at once. This represents a significant growth in the phenomenon from estimates from the mid-1990s. Further, there are significant variations in shadow education use across countries, ranging from a widely normative practice to rare use.  Multilevel analyses suggest that family socioeconomic status is positively associated with use, whereas achievement is negatively associated. Students in poorer countries more extensively and intensively rely on shadow education than their counterparts in wealthier countries, after controlling for the student background characteristics and other country-level variables. Students in South-Eastern and Eastern Asian countries spend longer time on pursuing shadow education than their counterparts in many other regions. Students in more schooled societies more intensively use shadow education than students in less schooled societies. Together, the findings highlights the importance and complexities of national contexts in understanding cross-national differences in shadow education.