Shadow Education in Spain (2006-2021): From the Great Recession to the Post-pandemic

Abstract

This paper uses the data from the Household Budget Survey (EPF), issued annually by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) of Spain. This survey provides disaggregated data that allows to isolate household expenditure on private tutoring, while excluding out of school extracurricular activities which are not considered part of the Shadow Education (SE) system. Besides, EPF data is crossed with those from the 2019 Household Expenditure on Education Survey (EGHE), also carried out by INE, which provides data even more disaggregated on SE expenditure patterns. The paper focused on the evolution of SE spending in Spain between 2006 and 2021, a period that featured two global economic crisis – the Great Recession and the Pandemic – with a formidable impact on household financial resources and spending priorities. However, overall spending on SE tripled between 2006 y 2017, and the number of households that spent on SE doubled. Only the confinement in 2020 and the post-pandemic economic crisis appear to be slowing down the otherwise dramatic expansion of SE, according to the 2021 EPF data. Further, the paper focuses on student consumption rates of SE, by schooling stages, spending quintiles and school type (public, private or PPP), and spending by curriculum subject or area. We find that the percentage of students receiving private tutoring in Spain is considerable, 47 percent, with a floor of 30 percent in the poorest households and a ceiling just over 60 percent among the wealthiest. Both in the public and PPP school networks, spending on SE in the richest households triples that of the poorest ones. Building on these data, the paper suggests an analytical model on the accelerating factors of demand for SE, followed by conclusions on its political implications, both globally and specifically for Spain.