Marketising private tuition: Representations of tutors’ competence, entrepreneurial opportunities and service legitimation in home tutoring business manuals

Abstract

Education researchers have explored the marketisation of schools resulting from neoliberal education policy, but little attention has been paid to supplementary education markets. Supplementary education services, such as private tuition, are delivered outside of school but designed to improve performance within it. A small body of research demonstrates that the private tuition market in the UK and the USA is burgeoning, and that students' access to this service is differentiated by region, class and ethnicity. These emerging demand-side analyses are vital, but they cannot tell us about the educational entrepreneurship that shapes the supply of private tutoring services. This article addresses this lacuna through a discourse analysis of manuals, published as part of the developing tutoring support industry, that are designed to guide would-be entrepreneurs through the establishment of a private tuition business. This analysis excavates manuals' treatment of: tutors' motivation to work in the sector and their competence to do so; strategies to be employed in the marketisation of tuition services; and the need to build trust to ensure business legitimation in an unregulated industry. In conclusion, the article sets a new agenda for research into fast-developing supplementary education markets that explores: (i) the dynamics of this expanding educational workforce of private tutors; (ii) the ways marketisation addresses and augments parental anxiety about children's education; and (iii) the need for safeguarding and quality control in private tuition.

Solo self-employment, entrepreneurial subjectivity and the security–precarity continuum: Evidence from private tutors in the supplementary education industry

“…I…spent an afternoon meeting all the maths department there [local school]…and now…if they have any kids that need any help, they'll hand over my phone number…which is nice! (Julia-PT) This is then supplemented by introductory sessions, ongoing personalised teaching practices, and feedback to parents through which tutors bend themselves to the needs of the market (Aurini, 2004;Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson, 2020):…”

The association between private tutoring and access to grammar schools: Voices of Year 6 pupils and teachers in south‐east England

“…Semi‐structured focus group interviews produce what Ansell et al (, p. 175) refer to as ‘collective knowledges', because the pupils have an opportunity to present their points of view and hear the ideas of others. This research method can also help children relax more in the company of their peers and minimise the power differential inherent in the researcher–child relationship (Horgan, , p. 252). Each group interview lasted between 25 and 30 minutes.…”

Supplementary education and the coronavirus pandemic: Economic vitality, business spatiality and societal value in the private tuition industry during the first wave of Covid-19 in England

“…Tuition provided directly by teachers to their own students in low-income countries has attracted attention because of the corruption problems it may cause ( Bray et al, 2016 , Ille and Peacey, 2019 , Kobakhidze, 2014 ); though in emerging powers such as India, a complex picture arises where teachers’ entrepreneurial mixing of school and supplementary career opportunities identifies them as both products of, and agents for, neoliberalisation ( Gupta, 2019 ). In Europe, a small number of studies explore the marketing of tuition ( Hallsén and Karlsson, 2019 , Holloway and Pimlott‐Wilson, 2020 , Šťastný, 2017 ), but the experiences of those running a tuition business in this developing market have received virtually no academic attention ( Holloway & Pimlott-Wilson, 2021 ). Beyond the assessment that “[t]he range and types of personnel who provide tutoring is broad” ( Bray, 2020, p. 14 ), “we know little about private tutors” ( Hallsén & Karlsson, 2019, p. 634 ).…”