Journal Articles

Despite widespread and substantial household expenditure on private tutoring in many developing countries, not much is known about their effects on learning outcomes. The main challenge in estimating such an effect is that the decision to send the child for private tutoring is endogenous. This paper utilises a large household survey conducted in rural India, and employs fixed effect estimation to control for the effect of unobserved variables. It finds a positive and significant effect of private tutoring on learning outcomes for students in Classes 1 to 8. The effect is stronger for disadvantaged students–those who are less wealthy, and those whose parents are relatively less educated. This research has been funded by Accountability Initiative (New Delhi) and was carried out when both authors were with Accountability Initiative. The authors thank the referee whose comments helped improve the original draft. The authors would also like to thank Yamini Aiyar, Rukmini Banerjee and Wilima Wadhwa for their support and simulating discussions.