Private tutors

A tutor is an instructor who gives private lessons. Shadow education is a name for private supplementary tutoring that is offered outside the mainstream education system.

Normally, a tutor will help a student who is struggling in a subject of some sort. Also, a tutor may be provided for a student who wants to learn at home.

In the United States, the term "tutor" is generally associated with one who gives professional instruction (sometimes within a school setting but often independently) in a given topic or field.

In British and Irish secondary schools, form tutors are given the responsibilities of a form or class of students in a particular year group (up to 30 students). They usually work in year teams headed by a year leader, year head, or guidance teacher.

Form tutors will provide parents with most of the information about their child's progress and any problems they might be experiencing. Ordinarily, the form tutor is the person who contacts a parent if there is a problem at school; however, the year leader or guidance teacher may contact the parents, since the form tutor has full-time responsibility as a specialist subject teacher.

A 2012 study by the Asian Development Bank and the Comparative Education Research Centre at the University of Hong Kong pointed out that private tutoring can dominate the lives of young people and their families, maintain and exacerbate social inequalities, divert needed household income into an unregulated industry, and create inefficiencies in education systems. It can also undermine official statements about fee-free education and create threats to social cohesion.

In South Korea, nearly 90% of elementary students receive some sort of shadow education. In Hong Kong, about 85% of senior secondary students do so. 60% of primary students in West Bengal, India, and 60% of secondary students in Kazakhstan receive private tutoring.

Demand for tutoring in Asia is exploding; by comparison globally, shadow education is most extensive in Asia. This is partly due to the stratification of education systems, cultural factors, perceptions of shortcomings in regular school systems, and the combination of growing wealth and smaller family sizes. Therefore, the education sector has become a profitable industry which businesses have created different kinds of products and advertisement such us "the king/queen of tutorial", a usual advertisement tactic of Hong Kong tutorial centers that has spread to South Korea, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India where tutors achieve "celebrity-like status". In some cases, successful Southeast Asian tutors will even embrace the title of "tutor". Online private tutor matching platform and online learning platform offering online learning materials are other creations.

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Wikipedia