By Lucy Carroll
The rise of the billion-dollar private tutoring industry has sparked calls for greater oversight and regulation of the shadow education system as experts warn the boom in coaching risks undermining classroom teaching.
At some public schools, more than half of students attend private academic tutoring, while coaching centres across Sydney are running more than 500 tutoring classes each week in maths, English and core HSC subjects.
Major private coaching centres in Sydney are running hundreds of maths, English and HSC classes each week.
Teachers say, for some children, tutoring has become more important than school, leading to disengagement in class and students learning curriculum content up to two years ahead of their peers.
NSW parents can spend upwards of $20,000 on tutoring in multiple centres preparing for opportunity class (OC) and selective school tests, while some companies charge up to $5500 a year for a single HSC tutoring course.
New research by University of Technology Sydney social scientist Christina Ho examined the influence of private tutoring at six public primary schools in northern and western Sydney, including three with OCs.
It found between 23 and 59 per cent of year 5 students attended outside-of-school tutoring, with the highest rates in schools with an OC. Most students were tutored for extension and test preparation, and some attended four days a week in the term before the selective test.
In Ho’s interviews with 29 teachers at the schools, some reported students prioritised tutoring over school work, leading to boredom and switching off in class. Teachers also noted some benefits of external tutoring, such as memorisation or remedial support.
Some of Sydney’s tutoring centres, including Matrix Education, run up to 400 classes a week.Credit: Steven Siewert
The study comes as education researchers and experts call for a national audit of the tutoring sector to assess practices and risks, including child safety screening, working with children checks and tutor credentials.
“Tutoring has grown to become a billion-dollar industry in Australia, but it lacks accreditation, enforced codes of conduct or real protection for students,” said Dr Ben Zunica, an education lecturer at Sydney University. He added: “Anyone can advertise services, without demonstrating qualifications or accountability. Many spend tens of thousands of dollars, with little assurance of quality.”
Zunica, a lead author on a tutoring policy paper published last week, said the unregulated industry employed thousands of unqualified operators and its rapid growth was deepening education inequities in Australia.
There is no data collected by federal or state education departments on how many students receive outside-of-school tutoring, why parents are seeking out the services and how much they spend.
Major tutoring centres, such as Matrix Education, run at least 500 classes each week, catering to years 3 to 12, mostly in maths, English, HSC and selective school preparation. Several coaching centres claim to have taught at least a quarter of last year’s HSC maths top achievers, while some pay cash prizes for state ranks.
Australian Tutoring Association chief executive Mohan Dhall estimates there are about 5000 tutoring businesses nationally, while Jobs and Skills Australia figures show there are more than 45,000 private tutors – a 26 per cent jump over the decade.
Dhall said a licensing body would “bring standards to the field” and is urging governments to “address the policy gaps and start collecting data”.
“It shouldn’t be the case that a child has to get private tutoring to get an education,” he said. “It is undermining school teaching and privatising the system in a free market, which is not the intention of public education.”
But David Luo, a former head of maths at a north-west private school who runs Cherrybrook Maths Coaching, said parents generally seek out tutoring to make sure their children don’t fall behind, for remedial support or for acceleration.
He said inquiry-based, student-led and “discovery” learning approaches used in NSW schools for years had, in some cases, left children struggling to master essential maths concepts.
“Explicit skills aren’t being developed from a young age,” Luo said. “Children are being asked to do hour-long maths reasoning tasks in a lesson at school, and they may not have fluency in maths concepts needed to complete the task. So you get a chunk of the class who are lost.
“In some cases, this means children are up to two years ahead, and there is that fear of missing out factor: if parents hear their child’s friend is going [to a tutor], they are inclined to enrol too.”
He said the ability gap in year 7 was significant, and children needed to master times tables and fractions before starting high school. “Sometimes the basics are sidelined when the focus is on deeper reasoning,” he said.
British educational charity The Sutton Trust’s most recent report showed 30 per cent of UK high school students had received tutoring.
In her research, Ho said maths was the most common subject for tutoring, and a subject where large gaps in ability can appear in the school classroom.
“Where the majority of kids are in tutoring, the [classroom] teachers don’t bother to even teach certain content because they assume everyone’s done it in tutoring. But the kids who haven’t been tutored still need to be taught,” she said.
Ho said the tutoring industry had expanded with the growth in migrants from East and South Asia. “Many are first-generation migrants and place a high priority on education, where doing well in school is the key to the family’s future success,” she said.
Corey Weng is preparing for the selective school test next year. Credit: Louie Douvis
Mother Miya Weng said her son, Corey, who is in an OC class at a north Sydney public school, was more engaged in class after moving to a school with a selective stream.
He attends tutoring twice a week and will sit the selective school test next year.
“I feel like I wasn’t challenged much at my old school, and activities or tasks that the teacher would set I could do in a shorter time,” he said. “So school is more interesting now and pushes me further.”
While tutoring has long been associated with academically selective schools – some former selective principals estimated more than 90 per cent of students were in tutoring – Dhall said the industry had broader appeal.
“Many private school students, including from high-fee schools, and from comprehensive state schools, are in after-school tutoring,” he said.
Private tutoring businesses fall under Australian Consumer Law, a NSW Fair Trading spokesperson said, but they do not regulate the industry. The NSW Education Department and NESA do not regulate or register or regulate outside tutoring centres or coaching colleges.
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