NOTE: This is a bonus series designed for teaching postgraduate courses on Education and Development in Contemporary Asia. This episode (comprising previously published episodes of the Asian Education Podcast) is fully accessible. For details on terms of access to the whole series write to: [email protected]
Assessment, educational competitiveness and ‘shadow education’
This session examines the prevalence of supplementary private education (or ‘shadow education’) across contemporary Asia. Highlighting the intense educational competitiveness that has fuelled this phenomenon, we discuss what is causing this, and why it has become so pervasive and extreme. Much of the focus in discussions of educational intensity focuses on cultures and systems of educational assessment, but competitive credentialism is more than a state of mind or a matter of testing techniques - it is symptomatic of deeper social issues. The fundamental factors driving the explosive growth of shadow education are varied and complex. They include the rapid expansion of access to education (at both schooling and college levels); a corresponding growth in the use of educational qualifications to select candidates for employment and further education; and profound social insecurity in contexts of minimal public welfare provision and vast (and growing) disparities in income and opportunity. The ramifications of the shadow education ‘craze’ are also extensive and complex, and include its ‘backwash’ effect on regular schooling.
This session draws on previous episodes of the Asian Education Podcast: Series 1, Episode 10 with Zhang Wei: Series 2, Episode 5: Latika Gupta on Educational Philanthropy in India Series 4 (Asian Education on Film), Episode 8: Aarakshan
Questions discussed include: What is the role of culture or popular attitudes in fuelling the craze for ‘shadow education’ in Asian societies? Why do governments (e.g. in China) often focus on cultural attitudes or opportunistic profiteering as key determinants of this problem? What forms does private supplementary education take? To what extent and why do patterns of provision vary across different societies or regions of Asia - e.g. in South Asia as compared with East Asia? What effects does the growth of private supplementary education have on regular formal schooling? What impacts does this phenomenon have on the work of teachers in the formal system? How is the expansion of shadow education related to the growth of private provision in education more broadly? How have various governments responded to the growth of shadow education and the social pressures with which it is related? Taking the case of China’s ‘Double Reduction Policy’ as an example, what can we say about the prospects of success for such attempts to curb the supply of private supplementary education?
Readings: Zhang Wei (2023). Taming the Wild Horse of Shadow Education: The Global Expansion of Private Tutoring and Regulatory Responses. London and New York: Routledge (open access).
Kaori Okano (2021). Education and Social Justice in Japan. New York and London: Routledge, Chapter 7.
Edward Vickers (2024). Review of Le Lin (2022), The Fruits of Opportunism, China Journal 91, 136-139.
Bhorkar, S., & Bray, M. (2018). ‘The expansion and roles of private tutoring in India: From supplementation to supplantation’, International Journal of Educational Development, 62, 148-156.
