Queensland University of Technology

Tutoring: What lurks in the shadowy education sector

Grattan Institute, tutoring, , , ,

Very early in my teaching career, about 1996, I was asked to tutor a student whose parents had migrated from Russia. At the end of our two-hour tutoring session, she burst into tears. 

I thought I must have done a very poor job and inquired. The student explained she’d learned more in that two-hour session than in a year and half of tutoring with other providers.  She said her parents had been academics in Russia. Now her father worked in a factory and her mother as a seamstress to pay for her tuition. Her tears were her shame for wasting her parents’ money in the past. 

This experience made me angry and sparked a desire to understand the private tutoring sector and its impact on vulnerable students and families who vest trust in tutors and tutoring businesses. 

Part of a movement to privatise education

Globally, the private tutoring market is estimated to be worth about US$62bn (just under AUD$100bn) and an estimated compounded annual growth rate of just under 10% for the next 8 years. Its impact and effect on mainstream education is a growing problem for national governments. Its growth has been characterised as part of a movement to privatise education. 

My private informal research conducted over the next four years revealed a number of problems  within what has been called the shadow education sector. The issues I uncovered included no disclosure to parents or students about what was offered, no disclosure about the child protection status (if any) of tutors or the qualifications and experience of tutors. 

Tax avoidance

Most payments were to be made in cash for tax avoidance by tutors. These tutors would not provide any reports or insights about student progress (or lack thereof) meaning parents could never make informed decisions. And many businesses marketed the marks students obtained in particular exams as “evidence” of their success rates.

Today all of these issues remain – and there are additional concerns as well.

In 2002, I approached Standards Australia and asked if they would consider creating a standard for the sector. They convened a working group I was asked to chair. Businesses invited to this working group did all they could to subvert the processes, arguing against the need to articulate what the ‘qualified’ should look like, arguing against standards for child protection and against the need to provide disclosure or reports. 

The working group disbanded after 18 months as it failed to make any progress and a smaller, more cohesive committee formed. In 2006 a Tutoring Code of Practice was released but this was withdrawn in 2017. 

The Australian Tutoring Association (ATA) was formed in March 2005 while the Standards Australia process was being completed. It was formed shortly after an invitation by Andrew Refshauge, the then NSW Education Minister, requesting commercial tuition providers form a self-regulation peak body. His departmental staff members were as frustrated as me by the self-interest of the private tutoring businesses that subverted the Standards Australia process. I have been CEO of the ATA since 2008.

Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) involvement

Shortly after the formation of the ATA I was approached about a business where the principal tutor, a public high school teacher and her staff, were allegedly writing HSC assessments for students. I referred the informant to the Daily Telegraph who ran multiple stories on this issue. The alleged conduct became the focus of an ICAC investigation which made its findings in Feb 2007. It could not determine whether corrupt conduct had occurred because the HSC assessment rules were too vague. 

In 2016 the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA) referred a matter to Hong Kong’s ICAC regarding a private tutor leaking examination questions on social media. ICAC investigated the issue and held there was a case of Misconduct in Public Office (MIPO). Three people were convicted of various offences in connection with this matter.

It is my belief that despite these instances, in almost every jurisdiction where private tutoring is endemic, there will be the potential for corruption involving public officials working in, or related to tutors working in, the private tutoring sector.  

A role for tutors in mainstream education

I started advocating in 2015 for the use of tutors in schools for the remediation of educational disadvantage. I argue tutors should be specifically trained for the role: in special needs, pedagogy, assessment and feedback. Such a program would need careful design for and sustainable implementation. It should have clearly articulated goals and use evidence-based strategies for supporting students in need. It cannot be reactive as it has been to date. Unlike any model used anywhere globally, I argue the only body capable of undertaking tutoring in schools is a charity set up for that specific purpose. I say this because the public sector investment has not remediated the issue of illiteracy or innumeracy. A charity can be set to private sector levels of accountability and thus be more likely to achieve goals around the alleviation of the issues.

Lastly, I also believe that it is the responsibility of public companies and government to match investment in private tutors in school under this model. It should be in the interest of all responsible businesspeople to support those most unable to access education rather than consign such students to life on social welfare payments.  

The role should not replace teachers

Of concern is that the unfettered growth of private tutoring is impacting classrooms with students often coming to classes well ahead. This can mean school becomes a place where learning is devalued. In my experience of tutoring students from elite private schools and academically selective schools, much of the learning and time in practice is done in private tutoring. This causes a pressure to build on families not taking up private tutoring. More investment in tutoring means the supplementary space grows and becomes more relied upon, further lowering the comparative value of mainstream schooling.

Should tutors be licensed?

National governments vary in their responses to the growth of private tutoring. Some, such as China, have recently adopted a ban – but this may lead to a black market for private tutoring. Some have undertaken various forms of regulation or licensing. Most do nothing. 

But there are reasons for concern. Recently, complaints have come to the ATA about teachers who run large private tutoring enterprises after hours. Parents expect teachers will run such businesses with a high degree of professionalism. This is not always the case. 

A matter referred to the ATA by the NSW Office of Fair Trading concerned a secondary-trained Sydney teacher who was a tutor and business owner. She wrote belittling and aggressive messages to a 10-year-old primary school student. These messages compounded the student’s anxiety. In my capacity as chair of the ATA Code of Conduct Committee, I queried the actions of the teacher. She said students need to learn to cope. The teacher had not heard of the Child Safe Standards in NSW and had no insight at all into the emotional or psychological dimensions of safety. 

Consumers doubly vulnerable

Predictably, she also used her “teaching experience” as a battering ram against accountability. Consumers faced with such tutors are doubly vulnerable because the “teaching experience” is used as a weapon against them. 

Tutoring licences would ensure secondary-trained teachers taking classes with primary students undertake appropriate training. They can also ensure that all tutors understand their obligations with respect to child safety. Tutoring licences could be used to force tutoring businesses to stop using ATAR scores, NAPLAN scores, selective school entry offers or any other government-owned information for marketing or advertising. Licences could ensure all tutors have a working with children check and are local – unlike many profiles on various sites which can also be linked to scams.  

The growth in private tutoring has not been met with commensurate growth in accountability. It continues to grow, and governments continue to ignore it. To me, a practical licensing scheme is required to rein in the worst of the commercial practices and provide greater accountability, disclosure and standards in the sector. 

Mohan Dhall is a  lecturer in education at the University of Technology Sydney and is enrolled in a Doctor of Education at QUT. He is CEO of the Australian Tutoring Association (ATA).

Remnant of Aboriginal flag

Why spectacular slogans and perfect pop ditties will never work

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, teaching history, , ,

The phenomenon of moral politicking around an issue rather than a political party has been a key part of my research over the last five years. That’s been the case in many things to do with education – and education policy. Our social relationships now have a strong influence on our reality. Politics no longer works the way it did back in 1967.  Let’s look at what happened on the weekend as we voted on the Voice referendum.

On Saturday the No Vote for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament ( commonly called the Voice referendum) won in a landslide. It was a referendum clean sweep. All of the States and more than half the population voted No. There have been many over the weekend who have been deconstructing why. What did the Yes campaign do wrong? Whether there should have been a constitutional convention to avoid spending billions on yet another unsuccessful referendum. Whether there were truth or lies. 

We can analyse the should and the shouldn’ts for days. But in the end, voting on the Voice referendum should never have been the foundational mechanism for having a much needed national discussion about something so important. Maybe once it was. Maybe. But no longer. 

A national discussion

As I said, politics no longer works the way it did back in 1967. 

Back in the 1960s politics had the veneer of a powerful institution that could morally progress the nation. And I say veneer because it’s not like misinformation and politicians behaving badly didn’t exist back then. They absolutely did. But the social agreement was that the political system was represented as something that could be moral. Or at least held to account when it wasn’t. 

Today morality is politicised. In other words, the public are encouraged to gather around an idea because it is moral, not because a political party is moral. We saw this in the distribution of No and Yes votes in the Voice referendum. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) were campaigning for the Yes vote but traditional ALP seats resoundingly voted No across the country. 

Moral politicking around issues rather than  political parties has been a key part of my research findings since 2018. I’ve published a couple of times about it recently with my colleagues (here and here). We discuss how education issues are used as moral barometers in election campaigns and how education publics now tend to align themselves with a moral position attached to an education policy. An earlier finding showed that people are also more likely to make decisions that agree with their friends and family. 

Moral politicking

This is because our social relationships have a strong influence on our morality. 

The standard response to this phenomenon is ‘media literacy’ or ‘do your research’ or ‘google it’. Be critically literate. This is a great response and absolutely what should happen in the classrooms, in teaching reading and responsible authorship/creation. 

But, when morality is politicised, being critically informed as a moral position is simply not working. We should know that by now. Morality polarises. You can’t teach someone away from the opposite pole with snappy slogans, comedy and clever use of pop songs. They just make your pole feel good (and shocked when you lose). The most successful political actors (politicians/lobbyists etc) today are those who know that spreading misinformation is the best way to run interference – especially on a campaign so deeply concerned with telling the truth. And they are really, really good at it. 

Conservative political actors

These actors tend to be conservative. Conservative political actors, who are intent on wedging issues, do not care whether their descriptions are accurate or not. Indeed their whole purpose is to sow confusion and muddy the water to the point where people have no choice but to vote with their feelings. Meanwhile progressive political actors interested in accuracy, media literacy and fact checking spend all their energy correcting the misinformation or getting frustrated about people not researching. Finding the positive emotional register in “gotchas” when they evidence a flaw. This is a very normal reaction to misleading and inaccurate information. But while this critical energy is spent correcting information, no campaigning for change is happening. Indeed more often than not the conservative campaign is amplified, especially if these discussions are occurring in the media.

So what do we do about it? I’m certainly not advocating for less fact checking or critical media literacy. But we need to face the reality of the situation and consider where critical literacy fits in these times when clever campaigners don’t care if their facts are wrong and critiquing amplifies untruths. 

History and Geography’s poor cousin

It’s not just that people don’t understand how our political systems work that’s a problem, it’s that those who do know are concerning themselves with a system that no longer works the way it used to. Maybe Civics and Citizenship education needs amplifying. The poor cousin to History and Geography has been continuously overlooked in an education landscape dominated by literacy and numeracy. 

We have to have a hard conversation about how we teach people to deal with politics and campaigning texts in this political environment and it has to include the following. 

Less clamouring for the repair of a liberal-constitutional institution and its norms – something that no longer cares about truth. Find a way to make space for those who are grassroots campaigning because they are listening to people. Listening is how you reach people who vote with their family, friends and neighbours. 

Less bemoaning a crisis of democracy because people voted against repairing the Constitution. The logic is that their vote is not as valuable as your vote. A democratic crisis actually does exist in that slippery slope. That worries this ex-Citizenship Education teacher just as much as “If you don’t know, vote No” slogans. 

After the Voice referendum

Understand that we are in a significant political moment for Australia in 2023. We cannot connect this experience of the Voice referendum to Brexit or Trump or the 2022 Federal election. We cannot draw comparisons to the past when literacy became a policy object and critical literacy experienced a meteoric rise, full of hope for a well informed citizenry. Looking elsewhere is what we always do to make sense of unprecedented moments in our lives. We look back to work out what to do. But, according to Anthony Giddens, looking back for answers has always been what keeps conservative ideas in power. 

Looking away stops us looking our own uncomfortable politics square in the face. We saw racism and prejudice over the campaign. That needs dealing with immediately. We are not going to learn how to deal with our own future if we are looking to England, Europe or the US. Instead, we have to squarely look at our own situation and realise the answers are here already if we know where to listen. We also have to realise that a democracy means that ideas we find morally objectionable may gain traction and no amount of facts and critical thought will stop that happening. But moral polarisation will stop us talking and listening. 

Good can always be found and brought to the surface. That is the essence of politics. 

For instance, whether you voted Yes or No, the Voice referendum has repoliticised challenges faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. The past 40 years of neoliberal government has systematically privatised, proceduralised and neutralised the way issues like deaths in custody, welfare and healthcare, youth incarceration, mental health, access to food and water, access to education and addressing the literacy gap are dealt with in Australia. We know about it. It’s been campaigned about by both sides for 12 months. We know something needs to be done about it. Something with teeth.

Privatised, proceduralised, neutralised

That’s a good thing. That’s a grassroots thing. That’s a democratic thing. And educators who are well-versed in civics and citizenship, have inquiring minds, and listen, really listen, are going to be critical in moving forward. 

Dr Naomi Barnes is a network analyst and theorist at Queensland University of Technology. She is interested in how ideas influence education policy. She is a senior lecturer in literacy teaching and has worked for Education Queensland as a senior writer and has worked as a secondary English, history and geography teacher in government, Catholic and independent schools.