What drives demand for private tutoring in secondary education? Evidence from India

Private tutoring is widespread in India, and its demand is growing over time. In this paper, we employ a two-step Heckman selection model to  analyse the role of socioeconomic and school-related factors in determining household demand for private tutoring in secondary education in India. We use 75th education round data of the National Statistical Office (NSO), a pan-India household survey data collected between July 2017 and June 2018. We find that around 29 per cent of secondary school-going children in India attend private tutoring, the highest among all levels of education.  Results show that students from socially and economically disadvantaged families are under-represented in private tutoring and spend less on it than their less-disadvantaged counterparts. We also find significant regional (rural/urban) and inter-state variations in participation and household investment in private tutoring in India. Our results indicate that children from science and commerce streams have a higher demand for private tuition than their arts stream counterparts. In a context where ‘coaching culture’ is increasingly visible in secondary education in India, findings of this paper propose potential policy implications.