DOES SHADOW EDUCATION AGGRAVATE INEQUALITY OF EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES

Year 2016, Volume: 4 , 11 - 32, 31.05.2016

Yongmei Hu Wenfeng Fan Weili Dıng

Abstract

The “shadow education” system of private
supplementary tutoring has become quite common in East Asian countries
nowadays. Based on the data of Programme for International Student Assessment
2012 (PISA 2012), the paper analyzes the influence of shadow education on the
mathematical literacy of students of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea by
means of a hierarchical linear model, and estimates the net effect of shadow
education using the method of reweighting on propensity score matching (RPSM).
The following findings are obtained from the study: First, supplementary math
tutoring has a significant positive effect on the math score of students, and
such an effect is more obvious on Japanese and Korean students than on Hong
Kong and Shanghai students; second, supplementary math tutoring and
supplementary science tutoring complement each other; and third, attending
supplementary math tutoring may narrow the gap between students in learning
performance that is caused by the difference in their families’ economic, social and cultural status (ESCS),
thus promoting the equality of educational outcomes. Therefore, governments and
schools are advised to provide necessary opportunities of supplementary
tutoring for low-capacity students from low-income families and waive their
tuition fees; large-sized extracurricular education groups should be encouraged
to establish after-school learning funds and/or incentive funds for students
from poor families and grant fee remissions to those from ultra-low income
families, so as to create a situation where the government, the school and the
society jointly promote the equality of educational outcomes in the stage of
compulsory education.  

Keywords

Shadow Education, Inequality of educational outcomes, PISA, RPSM

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