Many schools rely on a range of partnerships with external subjects to carry out their functions, including those from the private sector. One type of entity that schools commonly partner with is providers of supplemental education services who offer school-based after-school tutoring programmes that focus on academic as well as non-academic (leisure-time) activities and tutoring. Whilst tutoring in non-academic subjects is less likely to clash with school offerings, school partnerships with providers of private tutoring in academic subjects, especially with those operating for profit, may bring corruption risks and potential backwash on schooling (Bray & Zhang, 2018). Although private tutoring private tutoring might be a flexible tool to remedy problems in understanding the school curriculum and can provide more individualized instructions compared to classroom lessons, it threatens children’s well-being if used excessively and, in its paid form, contributes to maintaining or exacerbating social inequalities (Bray, 2009). There are also issues of teacher corruption and unethical practices associated with the provision of shadow education by students’ schoolteachers, coerced tutoring or the deliberate omission of parts of the curriculum in school lessons to generate a greater demand for additional private tutoring provided by the teacher (Brehm & Silova, 2014).

So far, the research of such school and private tutoring partnerships has focused on the context either of developing countries with relatively low-quality schooling and low accountability, such as Myanmar, India or Cambodia (Bray et al., 2020, 2019; Ghosh & Bray, 2020), or of those on the other extreme, for example, Korea, Japan or Shanghai – China (Kim & Jung, 2019; Yamato & Zhang, 2017; Zhang & Bray, 2017). The present research thus complements these studies with findings from a context somewhere “in between” these two extremes, that is, the Czech Republic, a post-socialist country in the center of Europe, where students display a largely average level of achievement where schools’ accountability for students’ results is relatively low and at the same time schools have considerable autonomy.

Previous studies (e.g., Bray et al., 2020, 2019; Ghosh & Bray, 2020) acknowledged the importance of the principal’s leadership in determining a school’s policies toward the private tutoring phenomenon, to enhance its positive aspects while avoiding associated issues. Awareness of the possible benefits and risks of partnerships between schools and private tutoring providers is thus important for school principals, who are the main decision makers about such partnerships in most contexts. Therefore, the present study aims to shed light on different kinds of school–private tutoring partnerships and to contribute to an understanding of principals’ perceptions of the benefits and risks of such partnerships.

A range of typologies covering the partnerships of schools with external bodies were considered for framing and structuring the findings of the study. However, they were found to be too general or with a different focus, so the present study uses the typology of Bray and Zhang (2018), which – as far as the authors of this study are aware – is the only existing typology of school partnerships with shadow education providers. For analytical reasons, Bray and Zhang (2018, p. 4) distinguished three different forms of such partnerships according to the degree of cooperation between the school and the private tutoring provider:

(1) Passive (public schooling and private supplements complement each other but are not coordinated);

(2) Moderate (e.g., public teachers may recommend tutors to students and their families, and perhaps even monitor the activities of the tutors and liaise with the families);

(3) Active (public schools and private supplementary education providers collaborate in specific programmes).

The paper is mainly concerned with the second and third forms of collaboration.

By exploring school-level practices related to cooperation with private supplementary tutoring providers in Czech lower secondary schools, the paper aims to answer the following research questions: (1) What forms of moderate and active partnerships with private tutoring providers do Czech lower-secondary schools enter (and what are their features)? (2) What benefits and issues (or risks) do principals associate with these forms of partnerships? The project employed a convergent mixed-methods research design. The findings of the study are based mainly on qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews with school management representatives (i.e., principals or vice-principals), quantitative data from teacher and student questionnaires are selectively employed to complement or triangulate the qualitative findings. The schools were selected randomly from a stratified sampling frame that contained eligible lower secondary schools to ensure the representativity of the quantitative samples of students and teachers. Each school was visited personally by a member of the research team, the paper-pencil questionnaire was distributed and semi-structured interview with the school management member(s) was conducted. Apart from extensive field notes, the final qualitative dataset contained 40 interview transcripts taken with the sample of 39 principals, 5 vice-principals and 3 ordinary teachers during the school visits, who were from 43 diverse schools of different sizes (in terms of number of students) located in different regions of the Czech Republic (both urban and rural areas). Qualitative data from interviews with school management member(s) were coded and analyzed following the guidelines of thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Researchers familiarized themselves with the dataset during the period of quantitative data collection. Shortly after the realization, each audiotaped interview was transcribed and read before the initial coding of the material was performed. The codes were then grouped according to both initial themes that were established before data collection started (deductive approach) and themes that emerged from the consequent analysis (inductive approach). The identified themes were further reviewed to assure they complied with the criterium of internal homogeneity and external heterogeneity (Patton, 2014). Data coding and analysis was performed by the presenting author with the aid of MaxQDA 2018 software.

Czech schools forge both moderate and active partnerships with private tutoring providers. Among the moderate ones are tutor advertising in school premises. Some principals avoided it, because they “legitimise” private tutoring providers and the school partly accepts responsibility for the quality of their services. In addition, advertisements posted by schoolteachers of the same school that help them recruit students to their private lessons or courses are ethically disputable. Some schools recommended their students to take private tutoring, and principals found it suitable when schools do not have sufficient resources to meet students’ individual learning needs. In areas with a low supply of tutors, schools can help families interested in private tutoring by liaising them with its providers. Among active forms of partnerships are situations when schoolteachers work closely with private tutors. The effectiveness of PT may be enhanced by the exchange of information between teacher and tutor. Some schools encouraged senior students to tutor their younger peers in exchange for a fee instead of organizing free (peer) help, which is questionable. Finally, school also allow private tutoring in their premises. As a benefit, renting facilities to private tutoring providers brings additional income to schools, they can also arrange a number of additional services for schools, and students do not have to commute to receive PT. However, when unregulated and unsupervised, schools may legitimise PT that is unethical (e.g., coerced) and may exacerbate inequalities (e.g., unaffordable to most families), and some offerings may interfere with schools’ interests (e.g., compete with schools’ offers of extracurricular activities). The study was conducted in an education system that endows principals with high autonomy. The analysis of the Czech case revealed patterns that might be relevant for policymakers as well as for school leaders who potentially decide about such partnerships in Europe or elsewhere.

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