Unequal Lessons: Determinants of Private Tutoring Expenditures in India

Private tutoring has become an omnipresent yet unregulated and under-theorised dimension of education globally, particularly in Global South countries including India. This paper examines the determinants of household expenditure on private tutoring in India, using data from India’s Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy–Consumer Pyramids Household Survey (CMIE-CPHS) for the period 2014 to 2023, and the Government of India’s Unified District Information System on Education (U-DISE) for the period 2019 to 2022. Employing tobit and quantile regression models, the paper investigates how socioeconomic, socio-spatial, demographic and infrastructural factors shape private tutoring expenditures of households. The findings reveal unevenness and disparities in private tutoring expenditures across rural-urban location, income groups, caste categories and gender. The expenditures vary even within disadvantaged groups. These patterns suggest that household expenditure on private tutoring is not only based on access or affordability but also on how educational challenges are experienced by different groups. Based on this analysis, the paper argues that the expenditure on private tutoring is a coping mechanism for offsetting inadequacies in formal schooling. It thereby advocates for improvement in public education quality and regulation of the private tutoring sector to reduce dependence on shadow education.