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

Abstract

This paper challenges geographers to examine the lucrative, but vastly understudied, global supplementary education sector (e.g. private tuition; learning centres; cram schools). It marks a break from research in Geographies of Education on locational, socio-cultural and political-economy issues, by concentrating directly on the economic geography of this metaphorically monikered ‘shadow education’ sector. Centred on the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, the paper’s aim is to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the economic vitality, business spatiality and societal value of private tuition in England. Methodologically, it utilises in-depth interviews with tutors providing one-to-one instruction in English, maths or science in the regionally-differentiated tuition market. The findings demonstrate business vitality was impacted: COVID-19 related disruption to schooling produced a profound economic shock for the tuition industry, though new opportunities also emerged from the crisis. Business spatiality was fundamentally rewritten, not only in terms of delivery but also as local markets became national ones. The social value of the industry was drawn into question, as the service was both vital and regressive in its distribution. In conclusion, the paper argues geographers of education must: (i) Embrace research on supplementary education in its own right and as it articulates with state education provision; (ii) Pursue economic analyses which consider both how markets work to produce unequal outcomes for potential consumers, and how they emerge as a space of educational entrepreneurship for those seeking to make a living; and (iii) Urgently examine how the coronavirus pandemic is rewriting processes across the education system.

1. Introduction

‘Geographies of Education’ has a complex and spatially varied history as a field, but by the twenty-first century this body of work reached critical mass on the international stage (Kučerová et al., 2020). The field’s research foci encompass early years, school-age and higher education (Brooks et al., 2012, Nguyen et al., 2017), but until recently supplementary education has been left off the geographical research agenda (Holloway & Kirby, 2020). Supplementary education refers to extra tuition received outside of school or college: it is provided on a commercial basis, for example by private tutors or tuition centres, in order to boost children and young people’s formal academic performance (Gupta, 2021, Ireson and Rushforth, 2011). Its absence from the geographic research may in part be accounted for by its global geography, as in the late twentieth century the industry was most developed in Asia and less so in European nations such as Germany, France and the UK where academic interest in Geographies of Education was particularly strong (Kučerová et al., 2020, Manzon and Areepattamannil, 2014, Song et al., 2013). Today, however, the industry is booming in previously low-usage markets (Bray, 2020, Guill and Lintorf, 2019), for example, being worth an estimated £2 billion per annum in the UK alone (Kirby, 2016).

The purpose of this paper is to focus geographers’ attention on the lucrative, but understudied, supplementary education sector. Much geographic research on education has been stimulated through the field’s links with locational analysis (Kučerová et al., 2020), social-cultural geographies (Kraftl et al., 2021) or political economy (Nguyen et al., 2017), but here our intention is to take a different path and pursue an economic geography of the supplementary education sector in England. Like all businesses, the private tuition sector has recently been exposed to the profound economic shock caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and this has hit England particularly hard (Harari & Keep, 2021). This paper therefore takes a three-fold focus that explores: (i) The economic vitality of the private tuition industry in the context of the first wave of the novel coronavirus infections; (ii) Changes to the spatiality of this economic practice wrought by COVID-19; and (iii) The social value of this business during the pandemic.

The paper proceeds below with a review of the relevant literature, before the qualitative methods employed are introduced, and the central sections explore tuition business vitality, spatiality and social value in pandemic-ridden England. In conclusion, the paper makes three novel contributions to geographic knowledge, demonstrating: (i) the importance of paying attention to supplementary education and its relationship with state schooling; (ii) the vital need to attend to the vastly under-researched economic geographies of education provision; and (iii) the imperative that we explore how, where and at what stage the pandemic is rewriting educational processes.

2. Supplementary education, economic geographies and COVID-19

Geographies of Education have burgeoned into a diverse and vibrant field in the twenty-first century (Kraftl et al., 2021, Kučerová et al., 2020, Nguyen et al., 2017, Waters, 2017), but important omissions remain. The field spans education designed for different age ranges, from early-years provision through to higher education, and incorporates formal, informal and alternative learning environments (Holloway & Jöns, 2012). By contrast, supplementary education – such as private tuition, learning centres and cram schools – is only just beginning to attract geographic attention (Deuchar and Dyson, 2020, Holloway and Kirby, 2020).

This paucity of work is perhaps surprising when contrasted with the extensive literature in comparative education, and some wider social science research, that charts global variations in this flourishing industry. This demonstrates that cram schools and individual tuition have long been important in East Asia, notwithstanding some state efforts to limit them, as high-stake exams, Confucian culture and other factors underpin their use (Chang, 2019, Tan and Yang, 2019, Yung and Yuan, 2020). Individual private tutoring also grew rapidly in the countries of the former Soviet Union, here as underpaid teachers sought to secure additional income and increasing numbers of pupils sought to progress into higher education (Kobakhidze, 2014, Silova, 2010). In the global South too, schoolteacher-s' need to secure a liveable income, alongside pupils’ desire to better themselves, combine to undergird the strength of the industry (Bray et al., 2016, Ille and Peacey, 2019). Robust provision of state education in twentieth-century Northern and Western Europe meant it had low levels of private tuition (cf. Southern Europe and East Asia), but this is beginning to change and levels of tuition are increasing here (Bray, 2020, Guill and Lintorf, 2019; Hallsén & Karlsson, 2019; Katartzi, 2017). In England and Wales – where private tuition is most commonly provided on a one-to-one basis outside of school, but which has seen a recent increase in high-street franchised learning centres that deliver their own curriculum – the supplementary education sector is now worth £2 billion a year (Kirby, 2016, Pearce et al., 2018). There is, therefore, an urgent need for geographers to take this industry seriously.

As geographers seek to examine this flourishing global industry, there are a multitude of approaches that could be taken; here we opt for an innovative focus on economic aspects of supplementary education. Geographical research on education to date has been strongly influenced by locational, socio-cultural, feminist and children’s geographies, such that studies which dominate examine questions about spatial and social equity in access; the material design of learning environments; education-related mobilities; and the making of young people’s subjectivities within educational spaces (Kraftl et al., 2021, Kučerová et al., 2020, Waters, 2017). Research about the political-economy of education is of increasing importance too, as researchers pay greater attention to the marketisation of early years, school and higher education in neoliberal regimes (Cohen, 2020, Gallagher, 2018, Harrison et al., 2016, Hunter, 2019). Nevertheless, economic questions about supplementary education are only now being put onto the geographical agenda (Holloway & Pimlott-Wilson, 2021).

Surprisingly, this paucity of attention to economic questions is shared in the comparative education and wider social science literature, where insights into the business of supplementary education play second fiddle to social studies about equity and efficacy in its use (Cole, 2017, Ho et al., 2019). There is a small scale literature which explores the educational entrepreneurship of those running franchised learning centres in Canada and the way operators ‘“slide into”’ running cram schools in Japan (Aurini, 2004, Dierkes, 2010). Relatively little is written about employment in cram schools: while their marketing strategies centre on the quality of tuition, including from ‘star tutors’ in Hong Kong (Yung & Yuan, 2020), this is in reality a second choice career for many tutors whose primary career ambition was not achieved, and tutors think the role is second best to teaching (Trent, 2016). 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). The need to address this neglect of economic questions about the supplementary education business is pressing.

The biggest economic challenge facing many industries is how to respond to the shock caused by the coronavirus pandemic: this led the global economy to shrink by 4.3% in 2020, but the effects have been differentiated in multiple ways. Geographically, advanced economies contracted by 5.4% in 2020, with the Euro Area being particularly hard hit (7.4%). Emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) declined by 2.6%, though China’s quick recovery masks an average decline of 5% in other EMDEs, which caused the first net growth in global poverty in a generation (World Bank Group, 2021). In sectoral terms, those industries tied to consumer discretionary spending were most vulnerable in the USA and UK in 2020, including arts, entertainment and recreation, hospitality and construction, and there was also sub-industry variability (e.g. e-commerce and non-discretionary retail rose while general merchandise shops suffered) (Klachkin, 2020, ONS (Office for National Statistics), 2020a). Business size is also significant, as small and medium size enterprises reported declining revenue, and lower cash reserves than larger businesses, leaving many concerned about their ability to weather the storm (Albonico et al., 2020, Klachkin, 2020).

These differentiated economic impacts of the pandemic have been experienced by a supplementary education industry which takes radically different forms around the globe. Consequently, no one simple narrative can explain the impact of COVID-19 on global supplementary education; instead, detailed investigation is required to consider how this works out in different national contexts. This paper focuses on supplementary education in England, as one particularly interesting example of this trend. Here, the tuition industry is primarily comprised of small scale businesses rather than cram schools, with most provision being delivered by private tutors one-to-one in the home (Holloway & Kirby, 2020). Nationally, the UK economy has been exceptionally hard hit by the pandemic (Harari & Keep, 2021), with GDP contracting by 9.9% in 2020 (ONS, 2021a). Moreover, the supplementary education sector in England might also be expected to be impacted by rapid and abrupt changes to state education in response to COVID-19. For instance, this has seen both the cancellation of high-stake examinations at ages 16 and 18 – a factor that might curtail demand for tuition – and the closure of schools – a withdrawal of basic education services that might, by contrast, boost the use of private tutors (UK Government, 2020). There are, however, no published analyses of the economic impact of COVID-19 on this sector.

The purpose of the paper is to fill this lacuna in knowledge about the economic geography of supplementary education, and it does so through a three-fold focus on the impact of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic on private tuition in England. The first wave of infections peaked in England between March and the end of May 2020, with national restrictions operating from March until July that year (ONS, 2021b). Firstly, the paper will attend to the vitality of the private tuition industry under COVID-19. Prior to the pandemic, much of the literature on supplementary education focused not only on the vibrancy of the industry in its Asian heartlands, but also its global spread (Bray and Kobakhidze, 2014, Manzon and Areepattamannil, 2014), including most recently to a wider range of European nations (Guill & Lintorf, 2019). The question to be asked is whether this previously burgeoning market (Kirby, 2016) was affected positively or negatively by the pandemic. This is of particular interest in England where most private tutors are solo self-employed workers who directly experience economic volatility. On the one hand, single-person operations may find it particularly difficult to survive economic storms, for example due to over-reliance on a small number of clients or liquidity constraints (Boeri et al., 2020), suggesting that a drop in demand might leave these educational entrepreneurs in a precarious position. On the other hand, self-employment increases whenever unemployment rates rise, as it is taken up by workers with few alternatives (Bögenhold, 2019), highlighting the potential, especially if demand increased, for the sector to offer a haven to workers who have lost jobs elsewhere. This diversity of potential outcomes means empirical research is required to trace the course of events.

Secondly, the paper will pivot to consider the spatiality of private tuition as an economic practice during the pandemic. In educational literature, supplementary education has been metaphorically called ‘shadow education’ as the shape of the sector in any given nation not only mirrors the demands placed upon pupils by the state’s school system, but it is also commonly shaded from view (Bray, 2017). The notion that supplementary education exists in the shadows is particularly apposite in England where the domestication of the industry – in which two-thirds of tuition sessions take place in a pupil’s or tutor’s home – means it is often overlooked (Holloway & Kirby, 2020). Pre-pandemic, most tuition globally was delivered face-to-face (e.g. domestically or in cram schools) as, while the possibilities of online tuition had been heralded (Ventura & Jang, 2010), it appeared that in-person tuition was deemed better suited to a wider diversity of young people (Bray, 2020). This paper explores how COVID-19 has influenced the spatiality of a largely face-to-face, domestic industry in England, given that it effectively closed in-person schooling for at least 1.5 billion children in 160 countries worldwide (Blake & Wadhwa, 2020), including the vast majority of those in England (some vulnerable and essential workers’ children were excepted) (UK Government, 2020).

Thirdly, the paper will rotate its focus to consider the social value and ethics of providing private tuition during a pandemic. The provision of supplementary education is a contentious issue that presents a policy conundrum to national governments. State practices vary from attempts to curb the industry, through efforts to regulate it, or ignore its existence, to policies that legitimate the sector and seek to co-opt its benefits for the national good (Choi and Cho, 2016, Doherty and Dooley, 2018, Yamato and Zhang, 2017, Zhan, 2014, Zhang and Bray, 2017). Their dilemma stems from the fact while on balance tuition is considered to increase human capital (EEF, 2018), this efficacy comes at the cost of equality. Access to the sector generally favours those with more power in society which, depending upon location, often means children from better off families, those in more developed regions within a country, and those from the ethnic majority (Azam, 2016, Matsuoka, 2018, Pallegedara, 2018, Zhang and Xie, 2016), though it is notable that ethnic minorities in some countries in the global North have higher usage than their White counterparts (Ho et al., 2019, Sriprakash et al., 2016). Moreover, there are concerns that these increases in human capital may also come at a cost to children’s psychological well-being if they spend many hours in supplementary education in addition to schooling (Chen and Lu, 2009, Kuan, 2018). This paper explores how tutors think about the social value and ethics of their work in an industry that is largely considered to have socially regressive consequences (Holloway and Kirby, 2020, Matsuoka, 2018) during the upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Drawing these three research threads together, the aim of the paper is to investigate the vitality, spatiality and social value of private tuition during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in England. The next section turns to consider the methods employed.

3. Methodology

Historically, private one-to-one tuition in England was used by the aristocracy as an alternative or precursor to schooling, but during the twentieth century tuition levels were low as formal schooling expanded to take its place (Holloway & Kirby, 2020). However, the growing need for credentials in the knowledge economy, alongside the marketisation and underfunding of education, have prompted growth in this service (Ball and Youdell, 2008, Bray and Kobakhidze, 2014, Whitty and Wisby, 2016). In pre-pandemic England, over a quarter of pupils aged 11–16 used supplementary education at some point in their academic career, for example to help gain access to academically selective secondary education, or to prepare for high-stake examinations taken in Year 11 at ages 15–16 (called GCSEs) and in Year 13 at ages 17–18 (commonly A Levels) (Hajar, 2020, Holloway and Kirby, 2020, Ireson and Rushforth, 2011). Socially, usage reflected established regional and classed patterns of advantage, but the greater use by non-White children facilitated, to an extent, Black and minority ethnic (BAME) advancement (Holloway & Kirby, 2020).

Most tuition in England is delivered one-to-one in the child’s or the tutor’s home (Holloway & Kirby, 2020), and we therefore focus on this dominant mode of delivery in this paper. The difficulties of researching a form of education that exists in the shadows are well recognised (Bray, 2010). In this instance, it was not possible to conduct a representative questionnaire survey of tutors as the industry has no entry requirements, no register of participants and is devoid of regulation. Instead, a qualitative approach was adopted, and twenty tutors were purposively sampled to participate in in-depth, semi-structured interviews to explore the diversity of this market. In order to encompass regional variations, we recruited six tutors from areas with high (London = 43.8%), medium (East Midlands = 27.5%) and low (North West = 13.5%) levels of tuition usage (at some point in their schooling) amongst state-educated pupils aged 11–16. Further, we differentiated these tutors by qualification – ensuring three tutors in each region were qualified teachers and three were not (Aurini, 2006) – and subject – making sure each trio included an English, maths and science tutor, the most commonly tutored subjects in England (Holloway & Kirby, 2020; Maths and science tutors sometimes cover both topics). All tutors offered tuition to children aged 11–18, with some also tutoring younger children, university students and occasionally other adults. Reaching saturation in the stories told is important in qualitative sampling (Baker & Edwards, 2012): we therefore interviewed two further tutors, who met our original criteria, and offered additional perspectives. In demographic terms, our sample comprised: 9 men and 11 women; and 12 White British, 3 British Asian (2 East Asian; 1 South Asian), 3 British mixed race, and 2 Black tutors (1 British; 1 African). This sampling strategy provided a rounded insight into one-to-one tuition, but future research could also be undertaken with group tuition centres which, pre pandemic, were a minor but developing part of the market.

The recruitment and fieldwork for this study was undertaken online to manage interviewee and researcher risk during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Private tutors with relevant profiles were identified through LinkedIn, Facebook, Gumtree and tutoring websites, and approached about participation. All interviewees were given information about the research and their rights as participants. They gave informed consent and were guaranteed anonymity (unless disclosure was required for safeguarding), while their data was securely stored (British Educational Research Association, 2018). This methodological approach was given full ethical clearance and risk approval by Loughborough University. The interviews were conducted between late May and early August 2020 over telephone or video calls, depending on the interviewees’ preference. We were initially concerned that telephone and video calls might inhibit interviewee rapport, but like other previous studies we did not find this to be a significant issue (Deakin & Wakefield, 2014). Indeed, the length of the interviews was considerably greater than we had originally anticipated: they ranged from 91 min to 3 h 21 min, lasting on average 2 h 20 min. Full transcriptions were produced by an audio typist who had signed a confidentiality agreement: in excerpts presented later in the paper, an ellipsis signifies the removal of superfluous words. The tutors are referred to by a pseudonym to protect their anonymity, and a code following their excerpt identifies their qualification status (T = Teacher; NT = Not a qualified teacher), subject (E = English, M = Maths, S = Science; M&S = Maths and Science) and region (EM = East Midlands; L = London; NW = North West).

The interview transcripts were subject to systematic multi-stage qualitative analysis to ensure the rigorous interpretation of the data. The process began with a close reading of the interviews to refamiliarize the authors with the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Multiple levels of codes were then applied to the interviews in a branching tree system (Bazeley & Jackson, 2013). These codes reflected both deductive and inductive reasoning, as interviews were scrutinised for issues of interest anticipated in the literature review and raised unexpectedly by interviewees (Reichertz, 2014). The benefit of using NVivo to code is that it allows multiple codes to be applied to complex parts of the data (Bazeley & Jackson, 2013). In the subsequent analysis, codes from individual accounts were compared to consider dominant themes, as well as countervailing views (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The next section of the paper considers the research findings in the context of the wider literature.

4. COVID-19 and the economic geography of private tuition

4.1. Economic vitality: Falling off a cliff or safe harbour in the storm

On 18th March 2020, the Prime Minister in England announced on national television that schools would shut from the end of the week until further notice (with limited exceptions for vulnerable and key workers’ children)(Johnson, 2020a), while the Education Secretary revealed in the House of Commons that summer GCSE and A Level examinations for 16 and 18 years olds were cancelled (Department for Education & Williamson, 2020). These announcements caused an immediate and sharp economic shock in the tuition sector:

[T]he day that the exams were cancelled, everything fell off a cliff…the very great majority I teach are GCSE and A Level [students]…that following day I’d lost two thirds of my teaching. (Julia-T-M-NW)

COVID definitely knocked off about a third of my students, [I] went down from about thirty hours a week to about twenty-one. (Tim-NT-M-NW)

I had about 25 students…I went to zero. I lost everything overnight. (Kate-NT-E-EM)

Moreover, the timing of the news meant it suppressed the market just before the annual spring peak in business that sustains tutors through quieter phases of the year:

[T]hat was an absolute nightmare, the cancellation of exams…what I missed out on was the kind of exam boom that takes place around Easter…normally the Easter holidays would be full of work…you’re turning people down…that just didn’t happen this year. (Owen-NT-M&S-L)

Boeri et al. (2020) have argued that solo self-employed workers are more at risk in economic downturns, but the supplementary education sector’s close relationship with the school system it shadows has enhanced tutors’ precarious position. Although educationalists studying tuition in East Asia increasingly question the veracity of the moniker ‘shadow education’ – as there commercial tuition not only reflects, but also reshapes, schooling (Chang, 2019, Jheng, 2015, Zhang and Bray, 2017) – this research demonstrates that in the emergent English market, the shadow effect cannot be underplayed, as changes to schooling have produced deep and abrupt challenges to the tuition industry’s vitality.

Many tutors anticipated that this loss of examination clients would be countered by demand stimulated by school closures, including from families with children in Years 10 and 12 due to sit high-stake examinations in the following summer of 2021, and parents of primary-school pupils wanting core curriculum provision. This replacement market was smaller than expected, however, especially in previously buoyant London (Holloway & Kirby, 2020):

One thing that tutoring agencies have said across the board is that it's been the quietest summer in their histories. (Lewis-NT-E-L).

I’ve thought initially that maybe I will be able to get more students, maybe students in primary school…the parents maybe might be struggling with home-schooling…I haven’t been able to find any. (Esme-NT-M-L)

In the face of reduced demand, some tutors initially remained patient, hoping that things would return to normal, but more took action as time went on and the depth of the economic crisis riven by COVID-19 became clear (Harari and Keep, 2021, ONS (Office for National Statistics), 2021a, ONS (Office for National Statistics), 2021b). Increasing marketing to raise one’s visibility in a crowded marketplace was one strategy (see later), including asking existing clients to recommend them, upping social media posts, placing online adverts, establishing webpages, increasing registrations with traditional tuition agencies and joining online platforms that advertise tutor profiles to potential clients. Reducing price was a second potential strategy, and numerous tutors did follow this path to attract new clients and retain existing ones. Abraham, a young teacher in London who migrated to England from Africa in his teenage years, reduced his price from £35 to £25 per hour when he moved online: “I think it’s almost an encouragement for them to continue to use me.” (Abraham-T-M&S-L). However, the tendency for consumers to read price as a proxy for quality (Gneezy et al., 2014), meant other tutors who maintained prices (in Julia’s case £30 for GCSE and £35 for A Level), sometimes benefited from higher recruitment:

[S]ome of the agencies said that they thought my fees were high…[but] they’ve actually said when they’ve put more than one tutor out to a potential client… they’ve been coming back and picking me, and I think it’s because I charge more…in the supermarket…you’ve got three different types of jam in front of you, you’re not going to buy the cheapest…and you might buy the most expensive because you think it’s probably best. (Julia-T-M-NW)

Although she is convinced that her price – which is high for the North West though not London (Holloway & Pimlott-Wilson, 2021) – acts as a symbol of quality, it is noteworthy that as a female, White British, Oxbridge-educated, former senior teacher she also has social characteristics that can confer a competitive advantage in this marketplace.

Notwithstanding their efforts to attract replacement clients, many established tutors found themselves worse off in 2020 than anticipated and were cautious about future prospects. A minority were able to access Government help for self-employed workers (HM Revenues & Customs, 2020, ONS (Office for National Statistics), 2020b):

[B]ecause my business has dropped off…I did get a grant through the Government…they had my tax, three years’ tax anyway, so they just calculated it based on that. (Clare-T-S-EM)

Many more, however, did not meet the requirements of the scheme as they had previously earned above £50,000, earned less than 50% of their income from tuition, or had not worked/declared working in the sector long enough to qualify, a range of excluding factors that reflect the sheer diversity of tutors employed in the industry (Bray, 2020). Their business confidence going forward was tempered by recognition of the economic damage the pandemic had done to the country (Harari and Keep, 2021, ONS (Office for National Statistics), 2021a, ONS (Office for National Statistics), 2021b):

I think there will always be those who…no matter what will want to find the money to get the extra bit of help, but…I think there will be others who just can’t do it anymore. (Margaret-NT-M-NW)

[It] might not be a case of them [clients] not wanting to come back. It’s they’ve been affected by the coronavirus. Private tuition isn’t an essential thing…they’re obviously trying to pay their own bills. (Kate-NT-E-EM)

Indeed, this concern about declining demand in an increasingly crowded market, led one of the tutors to reskill over the lockdown in search of alternative employment:

[S]ome of the [tuition platform] websites…were reporting that an awful lot more tutors were then going online and signing up. So the market was becoming flooded with online tuition, so at that point I started thinking maybe this isn't viable anymore, and I applied for [social-sector job]. (Verity-T-E-L)

Although most established tutors suffered to varying degrees during the pandemic’s first wave, a minority blossomed, and a slew of new tutors joined the market. The wider literature tells us that self-employment rises in line with unemployment (Bögenhold, 2019), as alternative employment opportunities dry up, raising the prospect new actors would join the industry. Indeed, global research on the freelancers securing work through online platforms during the first wave of COVID-19 suggests they experienced tighter labour markers, as the growth of supply outstripped demand (Stephany et al., 2020). In tuition, the market was ‘flooded’ to use Verity’s terminology above, as both qualified teachers and those without previous experience saw the potential to earn a living under lockdown and subsequent social distancing:

People are hopping on to this because it’s online and if you have some skill that you can share with someone…it’s just a really easy way of making money. (Nina-NT-M-EM)

I have seen a lot more tutors come onto the market since COVID, you know lots more have lost their jobs, and think oh you know let’s try tutoring, I can earn a bit of extra income. (Ava-T-M-L)

Jonny and Adam are examples of teachers who established new tuition business during the first wave. Jonny had previously offered some one-to-one tuition in the evenings but, while not required to work in his alternative-provision during school closure, founded a business that delivered online, group-tuition in maths to primary-aged children:

COVID is actually benefitting me, cause it turned it [my tutoring] into more of a business…because I’m not at work on Monday to Friday at the moment, I can give my full undivided attention to tutoring.

Adam (T-S-NW), by contrast, had recently left teaching due to the grind in the system (Ravalier & Walsh, 2018), but was approached by local parents of Year 10 children to provide continuity teaching, and using Facebook he set up a side-line tuition business. University students also expanded their role in the industry, either tutoring for the first time, or dropping jobs in risky hospitality-based employment in favour of more hours tutoring:

[D]ue to Corona I started the tutoring…it’s all been through the Facebook…when I decided to become a tutor…a few weeks into lockdown…quite a lot of the…websites I tried [to register with] had to close applications because they received such a massive influx of probably students…a lot of my clients are…not getting the teaching they require. They’re not understanding things through online teaching. So they’ve employed me for that reason. So it has been very beneficial for me. Purely in the tutoring sense. Obviously it’s a very big national crisis. (Isabella-NT-M&S-NW)

It is notable that this expansion of the workforce centred on regions outside London where tuition usage was previously lower (Holloway & Kirby, 2020), and most often on the more affordable end of the market, including group tuition and low-cost student providers. For these operators, the tuition industry offered a safe harbour in a storm, and their entrepreneurialism reshaped the market, providing increased competition to more established tutors.

4.2. Business spatiality: Effects of COVID-19 on the spatiality of private tuition

The coronavirus pandemic has produced abrupt and fundamental changes in the spatiality of the supplementary education industry in England. Pre-pandemic, the sector was highly domesticated, with two-thirds of tuition sessions taking place in the pupil’s or tutor’s home in England (Holloway & Kirby, 2020). Virtually instantaneously, the closure of schools and subsequent national lockdown (Johnson, 2020a, Johnson, 2020b) transformed tuition from a face-to-face, home-based industry into a personal service delivered online: “since COVID, all my lessons have become online” (Esme-NT-M-L). Although the potential for online tuition had long been heralded (Ventura & Jang, 2010), it had not previously gained significant traction in the sector. ‘Predictions of imminent transformation are among the most reliable refrains in the history of education technology’ (Reich, 2021, p. 20), but the reality in tuition, as in schooling, has been more muted. A few tutors had previously used online tuition on an occasional basis, giving them valuable experience that helped them switch to this as the dominant medium of delivery:

I now use an online whiteboard facility as well as just Zoom or Skype…I have the webcam, so the docking camera which pans over the piece of paper I’m writing on. So normally that’s sufficient for older students but for these younger students, I have found that actually the online whiteboard is useful for…analysing exactly what they’re writing. (Thomas-NT-M&S-L)

However, most faced a new challenge but were pleasantly surprised that they could adapt to it relatively easily, even in subjects such as Maths:

I hate technology, I absolutely loath it, I would never have thought of being online, and I’ve been forced to learn to do it, to learn what Teams is, to learn how to use Zoom, to learn how to do this, and actually I really quite like it. (Tasha, T-E-EM)

I was very apprehensive as to how it was going to work, but in actual fact, there isn't a great deal of difference face-to-face versus online. There are one or two little topics, which…would work a lot better face-to-face, like using a compass or a protractor…But other than that…it's the same, really (Mark-T-M-EM)

Their success stems perhaps from the fact that the systems employed were largely designed to facilitate socially-distanced communication, rather than being educational technologies associated with the gamification of learning (Christopoulos et al., 2021, Reich, 2021). Notwithstanding this general positivity, Bray’s (2020: 18) pre-pandemic arguments that online tuition is best suited to “autonomous and motivated students” still holds some validity, as when tutors did express concerns, this was in relation to younger children or those with disabilities:

[T]he problem is because the majority of mine [tutees] are kids, trying to hold their attention online…They got their baby sister or brother in the background, and parents, and phones going, and TV’s on…It’s reaaaally difficult. (Kate-NT-E-EM)

I’m having to reduce some of the sessions with my autistic students…they’re not coping so well online, they find it very intensive. So I’ve had to ease back. (Clare-T-S-EM)

Although tutors found online business delivery relatively smooth with most children, this shift in spatial arrangements did present a challenge about how to interact with parents. Parental aspirations and socio-economic characteristics are largely cast as the driving force of tuition use in the comparative education and wider social science literature, with children themselves rarely being considered (Entrich, 2015). The spatial shift in business from domestic provision to online services, however, meant tutors now had less contact with parents:

I do talk to them a bit, but when you’re online, you don't get to have the length of conversation you would naturally have with them face-to-face. That's one key difference. (Lewis-NT-E-L)

On one level, this distancing from parents was clearly timesaving, but the reduced contact is potentially problematic. Business legitimation, in particular convincing parents of the quality and value of your service, is a key issue for the tuition industry (Aurini, 2004, Aurini, 2006), not least as the sector has no entry requirements or regulation that might guarantee quality. In this context, business advice manuals for new tutors emphasise the importance of feedback to parents (including details of what has been accomplished and pointers on what still needs to be achieved) as a key mechanism through which tutors may cultivate existing clients, reinforcing the worth of their service (Holloway and Pimlott‐Wilson, 2020). Tutors are less overtly mercenary in discussing the value of feedback than business manuals; nevertheless, the nature of online tuition can impair efforts to legitimate their service:

[I]t does provide a bit of difficulty because I obviously want the parents to feel comfortable with me…So occasionally the parents will appear in the background of Teams, or…be there first logging the child on, so I will always make sure…I speak to them…And I do try and keep in contact with the parents outside the lesson…message them and just let them know…what we are doing at the moment and how their child is doing… just regularly keep in touch with them because I do recognise that they put a lot of trust in me and I'd like them to feel comfortable…with my ability and that, you know, they are happy with what they are paying for. (Phoebe-NT-E-NW)

Although tutors had found the shift to online surprisingly easy with children, and to a lesser extent parents, the real surprise was how much it benefited themselves. The vast majority of tutors embraced online delivery as it radically improved the efficiency of their business:

I don't think I'm going to go back to tutoring in person…It's just the time, travelling time…even though I get paid 20 pounds [per hour of delivery] the amount of time that I'd actually spend travelling there and back…was a loss…it just worked so much better for me. (Elimu-NT-M&S-EM)

The fact that they were not required to go into children’s homes, or have clients into their home, also helped ease safeguarding concerns as there was no physical co-presence with children, and, like other homeworkers, they were keen to protect their home from the intrusion of work (Johnson et al., 2007):

[N]ow I’ve done it this way, I actually prefer not having people in and out. I need to kind of separate a little bit you know business and home…[so] the house isn’t just sucked up you know as business, which is what sometimes happens when you tutor…if someone’s here, they [my children] can’t come down and watch TV, they’ve got to stay upstairs. (Tasha, T-E-EM)

Therefore, while one or two wanted a return to face-to-face teaching (e.g. Kate, who lost a number of younger clients), most were hopeful that they could keep tuition, for at least some students, online. Part-time tutors who had other sociable work/learning opportunities were keener on fully-online businesses, but full-time tutors were more likely to prefer a mixed economy of provision:

I wouldn’t want to keep it all online because I could end up just living in my kitchen for the rest of my life if I’m not careful! (laughs) But I would like to do that half and half in the future. (Julia-T-M-NW)

The shift in spatiality centred not just on service delivery, however; it also impacted tutors’ capacity to source business. Tutors were keen on online tutoring because it meant they could reach a larger market of families, including both those in more distant parts of the same city that could not be reached in rush-hour traffic, and those around the country and globe. There was, however, a geographic sting in the tail for some tutors. Tuition prices vary across the UK, being highest in London and lower in the regions (Holloway & Pimlott-Wilson, 2021). Some Northern tutors, such as Julia who charged £30 for GCSE and £35 for A Level, could now access a wider online market at what for them were relatively high prices, allowing their businesses to bounce back (see previous section). London tutors too were keen to expand online:

I might end up doing a bit more online after lockdown’s ended…but I guess one of the weird things about that is that in London the rates are higher, so you’d have this problem of what do you charge people if they don’t live in London, you know £40, £50 is not too unusual here, but with someone from say North Wales, or from a different country, [they] wouldn’t pay that amount of money…so I’m wondering what would happen there. (Owen-NT-M&S-L)

The answer to Owen’s question appears to be that London tutors risk losing the business. London tutor Ava, who charges £75 face-to-face and £60 online, failed to recruit as many new clients as she had anticipated during the first wave of the pandemic:

I thought I would get more [new clients] because more parents are asking for it [tuition]…I don’t think my price cater[s] to what they are looking to pay. I mean…its people all over the UK and obviously I am in one of the most expensive parts of London so that’s definitely been a limiting factor, my cost…has priced out a lot of parents. What do you think parents are looking for? Probably half of my wage. (Ava-T-M-L)

Whereas London has previously been the beating heart of the face-to-face tuition industry (Kirby, 2016), the move to an online, national marketplace means businesses in the capital now have to compete with onshore, but still less expensive, regional operators. Price remains an important marker of quality: as we saw in the previous section, wealthy parents do not simply switch to the ‘cheapest jam’ and select tutors charging £10 per hour. However, online, regional tutors may – particularly if they are Oxbridge-educated, qualified teachers and examiners – have other hallmarks of quality that give them the cachet to compete with the highest charging London tutors.

4.3. Societal value: The ethics of private tuition during a global pandemic

One ethical question that attracts surprisingly little attention in the supplementary education literature is whether private tutoring is actually needed (though this is a matter on which states have developed different standpoints (Choi and Cho, 2016, Doherty and Dooley, 2018, Yamato and Zhang, 2017, Zhan, 2014, Zhang and Bray, 2017). The issue of need is an important one as while pre-pandemic supplementary education was seen to raise children’s attainment, intensive tuition was also judged to be detrimental to their psychological well-being (EEF (Education Endowwment Foundation), 2018, Kuan, 2018). In this study, tutors’ views about the need for supplementary education during the pandemic were differentiated by children’s age. In the first wave of the pandemic – when the second wave was not yet anticipated by most, and there was not yet so much concern about the long-term impacts on primary children’s learning (Montacute & Cullinane, 2021) – most tutors foregrounded younger children’s wider well-being over formal learning. They argued that younger children would be better to play than have tuition, as social experiences were more important, and lost learning could be caught up with later. For older children, however, there was widespread agreement amongst tutors that pupils who had exams pending in summer 2021 needed to keep learning through the first wave, as it would have implications for their long-term futures:

[Y]ear 10′s, realistically when they go to Year 11 and sit those exams, that is the culmination of about 10 years of education for them…I would say that's quite important. Plus, those grades…you take them with you for the rest of your life. (Adam T-S-NW)

Moreover, tuition as a practice was seen to benefit these young people as it provided them with structure and a degree of normality:

I think that’s one of the only things that…has been constant since the lockdown for some of them. So I feel like for the well-being and their structure of the days, I feel like tuition provides that consistency, provides that structure for them. (Abraham-T-M&S-L)

In contrast, the most addressed ethical question asked about private tuition focuses on who gets access to it. As a commercial service, access to supplementary education tends to favour higher socio-economic groups, especially in nations where performance is incentivised by academically-selective school systems and high-stake testing (Entrich, 2021, Zwier et al., 2021), as tuition is “much less about support to those who are in real need…and a lot more about maintaining competitive advantages within schools for students who are already successful (Bray, 2020: 11). During the pandemic, need was differentiated as support from schools varied: “some are getting lots of support, some are getting virtually none” (Margaret-NT-M-NW). As might be expected, private [fee-charging] schools, which are attended by economically-advantaged children, had the resources and incentive to provide good online provision. As many children were in online lessons all day, this dampened demand in this normally buoyant and profitable section of the tuition market, as fewer felt they required help:

[Q]uite a lot of my students, the parents actually did get a good response from their school, for [names esteemed private schools] to justify their fee, they had a very competent online learning set-up for the students attending the school, so they actually didn’t really feel they needed a tutor from that point. So, in general, my tuition load has dropped off. (Thomas-NT-M&S-L)

By contrast, state school provision was very patchy in the first wave, meaning that while some children were very well served, others did not have sufficient teaching during crucial years of their education. This prompted a growth in demand for tuition:

I had a pretty horrifying call from a parent yesterday, a new client coming on board…a grade A [high-performing] GCSE student who was being given functional skills work to tide her over…that is not OK…my eight year old could pass functional skills level 1. (Tasha, T-E-EM)

I had three people request if I…had availability because… people are like we've missed…so much education. People are either seeing actually this is an opportunity for me to either progress or to catch up…I feel like even though families are strapped for cash at the moment, I know a lot of them are willing to make that sacrifice. (Elimu-NT-M&S-EM)

Although Elimu refers to parental sacrifices, the option of purchasing private tuition is not open to all. The pandemic did see an increase in low-cost providers which brought more families into the market. However, the increasing number of families who needed to use food banks to feed their children (Trussel Trust, 2020), or those who could not access online schooling offered because they lacked suitable devices and internet connection (Montacute & Cullinane, 2021), were not in a position to do this. Thus, while there was a perhaps temporary dip in use by some private school students, and increased usage amongst some better off state-school students, the absolute class inequality associated with private tuition persisted. In recognition of the educational issues and inequalities caused by COVID-19 (Cattan et al., 2021), the Government established a National Tutoring Programme designed to deliver free-at-point-of-access help to disadvantaged children affected by school closures (National Tutoring Programme, 2021). Its aim is to tackle inequitable access to help, but like other such schemes (Bray, 2020), it also has the potential to normalise tuition usage rather than address the underfunding of state education and the prevalence of child poverty (Lambie-Mumford and Green, 2017, Roberts, 2019) which lie at the root of inequality.

Given that the need for tuition during the pandemic was higher amongst those less able to pay, tutors experienced difficulties in marketing their services. Prior to the pandemic, academic literature on tuition marketing centred on the ways it normalised tutoring, making it seem like a reasonable solution embraced by the responsible parent (Briant et al., 2020, Doherty and Dooley, 2018; Hallsén & Karlsson, 2019). The landscape shifted in the pandemic, and tutors who sought to replace lost clients now found themselves confronted by a sometimes-angry public, who chastised them for offering a paid-for solution to virus-based problems:

[T]here is a huge backlash against tutors asking…to be paid, and there was quite a lot of tutors that got some very bad trolling…you got blasted out the water “Why are you trying to make money out of this awful situation?”…the whole of their [tutors’] livelihood has just fallen off the edge of a cliff, they didn’t know how they were going to pay their mortgage and buy any food…and now they’re being told they should give their services for free…I’ve been quite careful with the advertising I’ve been putting out because of that…it’s not really…very nice when you get trolled!…But also…I don’t want…either a local reputation, or Facebook reputation, of being one of those sorts of people who tried to cash in…that’s not going to do your future business any good. (Julia-T-M-NW)

In this regard, the need Aurini (2004) identified for entrepreneurs to balance profitability with the humanistic face of tuition is exacerbated by the pandemic which – as its effects have been differentially felt (Crossley et al., 2021, Mikolai et al., 2020) – has seen heightened discussion about inequality.

Performing the role of the “‘caring entrepreneur’” (Gallagher, 2014: 1108) was something more easily managed by low-cost providers, perhaps as their prices seemed more reasonable, though it did raise questions about their role. This was especially true when they, like university students Phoebe and Isabella, offered both paid for tuition and some free sessions for low-income clients:

I wanted to help in some way possible…I did apply to be an NHS [National Health Service] volunteer as well, but I figured this was something that I was actually knowledgeable in…I opened it up and just said…if parents just have questions about the work that the school set that the child was struggling with…don't hesitate to get in touch. (Phoebe-NT-E-NW)

Nevertheless, the arrival of these new providers was not necessarily welcomed by teacher-qualified tutors, as it brought to the forefront, once more, the longstanding issue that service legitimation works differently across schools and supplementary education, with parents being happy to purchase tuition from individuals who would not be qualified to work in a school (Aurini, 2006):

[I]t has definitely diluted the quality of the industry… in the sense that there are lots of people who I personally wouldn’t say are qualified to be tutors…I have seen lots of people from abroad…I have seen lots of people saying I am a final year student at this university, or I have just finished my A levels…there is an argument for having those…they might charge £10 per hour and…some people might be happy with that because that is what they can afford. But I just…think well “What are you going to provide to these children?” (Ava-T-M-L)

Although these low-cost providers offered a service valued by parents, the question remains as to whether they should be providing this service, or if this need should be met by better-funded state schooling.

5. Conclusion

This paper has foregrounded the previously hidden geographies of supplementary education, paying particular attention to how the economic geography of private tuition in England has been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. The results demonstrate that the first wave of COVID-19 had a profound impact on business vitality. The closure of schools and cancellation of high-stake exams produced a sharp economic shock for many established tutors, causing significant parts of their business to disappear overnight. Nevertheless, the turmoil also produced new opportunities for some, including lower-cost, regional providers. Likewise, the pandemic wrought overwhelming change in the spatiality of business practices. Almost immediately, face-to-face, domestically-delivered provision metamorphosised into an online service. This transformation in delivery worked smoothly with most children, but reduced opportunities for business legitimation with parents. Tutors benefited from more efficient time-management, but the decisive shift from a local face-to-face to a national online marketplace meant higher-charging tutors, in the previously buoyant London market, found themselves undercut. Equally, the novel coronavirus raised new questions about the social value of this business sector. The fact that need for the service was highest amongst those least able to pay meant that tutors faced potential challenge for marketing what is a socially regressive service, even as they themselves were financially challenged.

This new empirical knowledge about the business of private tuition during a pandemic positively disrupts the geographic research agenda. First, the paper demonstrates the need for geographers to pay greater attention to supplementary education, both in itself and as it relates to systems of schooling. The supplementary education industry has a fascinating, fluid global geography that has hitherto primarily drawn attention from comparative education, and a smaller number of broader social science, researchers. From the Asian heartlands of tuition, the increasing importance of education to labour market outcomes, alongside broadscale political shifts including the rise of neoliberalism, post-communism and sustainable development agendas, have accentuated its global spread (Bray and Kobakhidze, 2014, Holloway and Kirby, 2020, Manzon and Areepattamannil, 2014, Silova, 2010, Song et al., 2013). Geographers can no longer afford to ignore an industry that is spreading its tentacles around the globe and could usefully trace the role of diverse mechanisms that prompt growth in different global regions. This uneven geography matters because the industry is largely socially regressive, favouring those already best placed to succeed, especially in countries whose education systems are amenable to such interventions (Entrich, 2021, Zwier et al., 2021). Moreover, the industry cannot be ignored as it is intimately linked to state education, a subject long an object of geographic concern. The metaphoric naming of the sector as ‘shadow education’ recognises the way state education can shape the supplementary sector (Matsuoka, 2018, Mori and Baker, 2010, Yamato and Zhang, 2017), for example, as we saw in this paper when school closure and exam cancellation dramatically decreased tuition business vitality. However, there is increasing recognition that the influences can be multi-directional (Jheng, 2015, Zhang and Bray, 2017), and that the tuition sector can also shape school education as part of “an assemblage in which society, culture, education and business are entangled” (Chang, 2019, p. 462). In this research, it could be argued that the development of the National Tutoring Programme for disadvantaged children in pandemic-ridden England is a valuable intervention, but also one that normalises supplementary education whilst diverting attention from the need for better funding of state education and policies to alleviate child poverty. In this sense, a market-based mechanism is doing considerable ideological work in legitimating the underfunding of state education provision.

Second, the paper demonstrates the need for geographers of education to pay greater attention to the economic geography of education provision. Currently, the field benefits from the strength of locational and socio-cultural geographies which centre attention on difference in the distribution, design, delivery and outcomes of educational environments (Kraftl et al., 2021, Kučerová et al., 2020), and political-economic research centred on the increasing marketisation of education (Nguyen et al., 2017). The import of this research is that we need also to pay greater attention to how economic practices emerge as we expand our lens to include the supplementary education industry. On the one hand, this means it is important to explore how the markets underpinning the supplementary education industry are shaped by the confluence of diverse factors, as they have socio-spatially differentiated outcomes for consumers and those excluded by these markets. This includes understanding why and where the service might be seen to be needed, how the product is legitimised, what is the spatiality of its delivery, how product marketing and geographically-varied prices influence consumer practices, and so on. On the other hand, it is vital that we consider these economic practices as they are not simply shaped by the societal manifestation of business logics, but are also a place of productive work for those who earn a living in the sector. Education markets, much like state-funded education policy (Holloway & Pimlott-Wilson, 2012), emerge in practice, in different socio-spatial contexts, through the actions of individuals (Aurini, 2004, Gallagher, 2014). These individuals are both agents and products of the system in which they work (Gupta, 2019), simultaneously driving marketisation as they seek to earn a living from the sector, whilst also being shaped by market forces that are not fully under their control. Geographers must research the experiences of educational entrepreneurs, who drive and are shaped by the supplementary education system, if we are to fully understand the geographies of education markets.

Third, the paper demonstrates that geographers of education must attend to the way educational processes are being rewritten by the coronavirus pandemic. In the case of the supplementary education industry in England, the sector has not simply witnessed a vast increase in ‘working from home’ (Reuschke & Felstead, 2020), its vitality, spatiality and social value has been fundamentally challenged by COVID-19, though further research is required to consider the long-term implications of these changes. Moreover, its connection to state education is being reworked, as state-funded supplementary tutoring is being touted by the right-wing state as the solution to lost education, rather than mainstream education provision (National Tutoring Programme, 2021, Weale, 2021). Education as a multicomponent system – comprising pre-school to university and life-long learning, funded either by the state or the individual, and incorporating mainstream, informal, alternative and supplementary provisions – has been radically tested by this pandemic (Day et al., 2021, Montacute and Cullinane, 2021, Wolfe-Robinson and Storer, 2021). This paper’s insight into supplementary education demonstrates some of the enormity of the changes in England, but urgent geographical attention is required to consider the impact on the education system as a whole, and the relationships between its constituent parts, in a diversity of nations, and across the course of different stages of the pandemic.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Helena Pimlott-Wilson: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Sarah L. Holloway: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Project administration, Funding acquisition.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.