Nutsa Kobakhidze - The ‘Shadow Education’ Industry - Hong Kong

The Leading, Language and Literature Podcast

In this episode I’m talking to Professor Nutsa Kobakhidze. Nutsa is a Director at the Comparative Education Research Centre and Assistant Professor at Hong Kong University. Her areas of expertise include comparative education; privatization of education; globalization and education and large-scale international assessments. I wanted to speak to Nutsa particularly in regard to the privatization of education and more specifically, private tutoring.

Having read an interview with the professor in Youth Hong Kong, a quarterly magazine published by the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups, I was instantly struck by how much academia and research there was around so called ‘Shadow Education’ that largely goes undiscussed in the day to day practice of classroom teachers.

We discuss:

1. Why the term ‘Shadow Education’ is used in academia and what services it covers

2. How or why shadow education benefits from Hong Kong’s education system

3. Whether there is a consensus on why students get tutoring in secondary schools

4. What students are missing out on during an evening filled with tutoring

5. Why it is so difficult to gain a consensus on whether private tutoring contributes to students' academic achievement

6. How schools, students and parents can work together to better understand the need or not for a private tutor

7. And finally, the ways AI technology might impact the shadow education industry in the future

Thanks so much to Professor Kobakhidze on her research and advocacy for better understanding around private tutoring and the impact it has on young people and their families as well as offering up her time to talk to me for the podcast.

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Links

Youth Hong Kong - the magazine for which Nutsa was recently interviewed.