Abstract:
Over the past decade, Pakistan has seen the rapid growth of a third sector in
education: shadow education. According to the Annual Survey of Education Report
(2013), 34 percent of private school students and 17 percent of public school students
undertake private tuition in Punjab. Anecdotal evidence suggests that private tuition
has a positive impact on learning outcomes. Keeping this in view, it is possible that
private tuition, rather than a difference in schooling quality, is driving the observed
learning gap between public and private schools? This study employs a fixed-effects
framework, using panel data from the Learning and Educational Achievement in
Punjab Schools (LEAPS) survey, to quantify the impact of private tuition on
learning outcomes in public and private schools. We analyze the demand and supply
dynamics of the shadow education market in Punjab, and find that private tuition
has a positive significant effect on learning outcomes, specifically for public school
students. For English, much of the learning gap between public and private schools
is explained by the higher incidence of private tuition among private school students,
but this is not the case for mathematics and Urdu. We also find that private tuition is
predominantly supplied by private school teachers, but that they do not shirk their
regular class hours to create demand for their tuition classes, as is normally believed.
On the demand side, private tuition acts as a substitute for receiving help at home.
Moreover, it supplements formal education rather than substituting for low-quality
formal schooling.
