Article Abstract 2

There has been a significant rise in the demand for private tuition in India, and the trend is no different in West Bengal. Many students undertake this supplementary coaching along with their mainstream schooling. Parents are putting a lot of money into this shadow education system with an expectation of improving their children’s examination outcomes. However, in reality, the actual impact of private tuition on academic performance remains in question. This paper aims to capture the impact of private tuition on academic achievement, for which primary data were collected from 380 secondary and higher secondary students. The data were collected from three selected districts of West Bengal, namely Kolkata, Hooghly and North 24 Parganas. We conducted our analysis using a multi-stage stratified sampling method. We applied a binary logit model to find the determinants of coaching participation and then used Ordinary Least Squares regression to measure academic gains. Our findings confirm a high prevalence of private tuition, with nearly 78.68 per cent of the sampled students attending coaching. Participation is highest in Kolkata at 91.7 per cent. Household income and parental education significantly increase the chance of taking tuition, and proximity to coaching centres also boosts participation. The regression results show a positive effect on student test scores, with tutored students scoring 4.85 percentage points higher than non-tutored students. Additionally, more coaching hours per week lead to better marks. Crucially, the academic return on tuition is higher for wealthier households, with wealthy students gaining more marks from coaching than poorer students do. Private coaching improves performance but widens pre-existing educational inequalities; thus, policymakers must regulate fee structures and improve teaching quality in mainstream public schools.
Keywords: Private Coaching, Shadow Education, Academic Achievement, Educational Inequality, Human Capital, West Bengal