The worldwide growth of private supplementary tutoring has been described as being ‘probably the most significant international trend in education in the 21st century’ (Entrich, 2021, p. 442) and it is a trend which is transforming national education landscapes in most major world regions (Bray, 2017).Private tutoring is defined here as being that which is delivered by non-state providers, outside of school but covering academic subjects taken in school, and for this reason it is often additionally referred to as ‘shadow education’. There are many different forms – tutoring can be in-person, online, one-to-one or in groups. It can occur in students’ or tutors’ homes, on school grounds or in dedicated private institutes. Such tutoring is a service for which families ordinarily pay privately, though importantly limited public subsidies are sometimes available.

Government policy responses to private tutoring expansion are fascinating from a policy sociology perspective in that they have been markedly different in different parts of the world and at different times (Bray, 2017; Zhang, 2023). Contrasting perspectives have been shaped by distinct material experiences in different countries and relatedly by differing discourses surrounding tutoring, leading to divergent understandings of ‘problems’ for society that it creates. Bacchi (2009) encourages scholars of policy always to ask, for any given policy reform, ‘what’s the problem represented to be (WPR)?’ Policy problems and solutions, Bacchi argues, should be understood not as being fixed and exogenous, but rather as discursive constructions that are situated within contingent societal contexts. Unpacking such constructions enables us to reveal deep logics underpinning problem representations. We can examine how particular problematisations have come to gain traction in specific places at specific times, considering their possible effects and how different circumstances may (have) produce(d) alternative understandings.

In this paper I draw on the work of Bacchi to analyse how private tutoring has been problematised in government policy in England – most recently in the National Tutoring Programme (NTP). This programme was introduced following Covid-19-related school closures in 2020. It offered publicly-funded private tutoring, ostensibly in the short- to medium-term to help children recover educationally from lost learning that had been endured during lockdown. There was a particular focus on offering tutoring to socially disadvantaged children, whose learning losses were known to be disproportionate, partly because more affluent families had often been able to deploy private tutors during and/ or after lockdown. A longer-term aim also existed, however. NTP literature emphasised a reality that inequalities in tutoring access in England far pre-dated the pandemic, and the programme was presented additionally as offering a prime opportunity to expand tutoring use more generally, narrowing inequalities in consumption more permanently.

Following Bacchi (2009, p.2), I pose the following questions: 

1. What particular ‘problem’ was the NTP in England reported in government policy to be addressing?
2. What underpinning conceptual assumptions can be identified within such a problem representation?
3. Where did the problem representation come from and how did it gain traction in this specific time and place? What nondiscursive factors – institutional landscapes, power relations, forms of knowledge production – have fed into the problem representation?
4. Are there any notable silences or issues left unproblematic in the problem representation?

The paper reports on an analysis of more than 500 policy documents and parliamentary debate excerpts capturing salient discourses in the English education landscape between 2015 and 2022. In order to answer Q1 and Q2 above, I began by using NVivo to code inductively all discourses emerging in discussions about tutoring in Department for Education and National Tutoring Programme documents in the period 2020-2022. Additionally I coded 2020-2022 UK Parliamentary discussions, capturing relevant statements from e.g. Government ministers on the issue of tutoring. In order to answer Q3, I began by coding relevant Department for Education documents from an earlier time period (2015-2020). Additionally, all coding so far had simultaneously involved my listing government and parliamentary references to specific organisations discussed as being authoritative sources of knowledge and expertise on tutoring. This exercise revealed a particularly clear influence of two specific non-state organisations in England contributing to the NTP’s emergence – the Sutton Trust and the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). Subsequently I analysed relevant public documents spanning several years from these organisations. Analysis revealed that the organisations had, prior to 2020, espoused numerous discourses that would later appear in government literature. Findings here were brought together with relevant prior literature on the changing nature of education policy making in England, particularly a growing role for non-state actors. Answering Q4 led me to delve deeper into my analysis of Parliamentary discussions. Here I reported on critical discourses in Parliament surrounding the NTP/ tutoring in England that I had coded, spanning the period 2015-2022. Analysing discussions over several years allowed me to compare older and newer critiques, and for further context I also examined these critiques alongside a) international comparative literature on the rise of shadow education/ government responses to this, and b) some English critiques outside of government and parliament (e.g. from teacher unions).

This paper contributes to an emerging literature on ways that governments worldwide are reacting to and engaging with the rise of ‘shadow education’. I find that NTP efforts in England to ‘level up’ tutoring consumption have been premised on a distinct problem representation. This is the construction that problems for policy are not created by the fact that many children have private tutoring; only that some do not. Underlying this representation is a discourse of mass private tutoring as being unproblematic and even desirable. Such a problematisation has grown to prevail in a decades-old neoliberal policy landscape in England (Ball, 2010; 2012) – one where, additionally, some value is still attached to selective ‘grammar’ schools. The pandemic produced a moment of opportunity in England wherein actors espousing pro-tutoring discourses were able to achieve marked influence on government policy. The problematisation neglects, however, an important question of whether limited tutoring subsidies (which have existed in countries including Australia, the US and Japan – Doherty and Dooley, 2018; Vergari, 2007; Dierkes, 2013) could ever be sufficient relative to growing private spending on ‘shadow education’. It also neglects experiences in a region such as East Asia where ratcheting competitive spending on tutoring has led to ‘overheated’ tutoring markets and problematic effects for children, parents and public education (Bray and Kwo, 2013; Choi and Choi, 2016; Exley, 2022; Qian et al, 2023). The NTP has helped some disadvantaged students to catch up on some lost learning since 2020 (Moore et al, 2024). However, it has also contributed to a further normalising of the tutoring market in England, devaluing public education while placing new responsibilities on schools and parents to engage with tutoring providers. Such seems particularly important to acknowledge at a time when NTP funding in England has also recently ended after four years.

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