The term shadow education refers to supplemental, privately-funded academic lessons outside of school. Shadow education is a global phenomenon that occurs in all nations with national levels of participation ranging between 10 to over 80 percent. Like a shadow, it generally goes unnoticed and it takes the shape of formal school in curricula and purpose. Shadow education takes many forms. It can be as informal as a senior student teaching a junior student or a teacher tutoring a student or group of students; or, it can be something more formalized and complex such as organized learning centers. Shadow education is growing. In some areas, learning centers alone have experienced more than a 40 percent annual increase in franchises, expanding to every continent on earth. In some countries, the costs of shadow education are comparable to or exceed the national educational expenditure. Families everywhere demand more education for their children and an industry has formed to provide this service.
Despite its extensive use and growth, shadow education has received very little attention by scholars. To date, only a relatively small number of studies have looked at shadow education; those that have are most often case studies of nation states. These social scientists are concerned that shadow education is a powerful force in education stratification. Given the stratifying nature of education generally, this privately-funded form has deep implications for issues of access and inequality.
Drawing upon PISA 2003 data which surveys over 200,000 15 year-old students from 41 nations, this study considers macro and micro level determinants of shadow education in order to ascertain whether its use is detrimental to educational equity. First, the study looks at potential national modal strategies. Second, it examines levels of family capital and gender on shadow education use. Logistic regression, correlation and descriptive statistics show the vast majority of nations use a modal strategy of remediation when employing shadow education, meaning shadow education is used for struggling students and not for high performing students, and all nations employ a remediation strategy when considering tutoring as apart from formal learning centers – in no nation do high performing students employ tutors. Moreover, national levels of inequality are associated with the use of shadow education. As inequality increases, so too does additional schooling.
Family decisions regarding the use of shadow education are driven by levels of economic, social and cultural capital. Comparing low- medium- and high-use of shadow education nations reveals similarities in resource allocation processes despite great national differences. Specifically, as family capital increases so too does the use of the shadow education; it is utilized more by girls than by boys; and, cultural capital is the best predictor of shadow education. Families with high levels of cultural capital and high levels of social capital are more likely to purchase shadow education compared to families with lower levels of capital.
Findings indicate shadow education is used in a variety of ways that include advantaging females, leveling the disadvantage of speaking a foreign language in the home, and is also a modern way that families reproduce a social class advantage. The complexity of shadow education use demands additional investigation as to the mechanisms behind its use – specifically, the decision-making process of families that includes the intersections of gender and class. The social reproductive aspect of shadow education use has implications on education inequality, particularly in light of recent efforts by the United Nations to provide free public primary education to all children. While mass education helps integrate children into a global economy, the use of shadow education will maintain existing patterns of stratification. However, the high use by girls indicates that shadow education is also being used to decrease gender inequality. These mixed findings point to a complex supplementary educational system that can both maintain inequality as well as reduce it. Recommendations include an increase in public awareness, national monitoring and regulation of shadow education.