Maragkou., K. "Parental Investments in Private Tutoring: Compensating or Reinforcing?"

Wednesday, 12 March 2025

Title: "Parental Investments in Private Tutoring: Compensating or Reinforcing?"

Speaker: Senior Research Associate Konstantina Maragkou, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge

Host:  Assistant Professor Efthymios Athanasiou, Department of Economics, Athens University of Economics and Business

Time: 15.30 -17.00

Room:  76, Patission Str., Antoniadou Wing, 3rd floor, Room A36

Abstract: Do parents use private tutoring to compensate or reinforce for their child's cognitive skills? We use linked survey and administrative data from schools in England to evaluate how parents' tutoring decisions respond to their child's abilities. We adopt a correlated random effect estimation which exploits within-child across-subject variation in test scores and tutoring investments. We find that parents use private tutoring to compensate for their child’s skills, but better educated parents do so more than low educated parents. While we show that tutoring improves educational progression equally across socio-economic groups, the differences in parental investment strategies are likely to amplify inequalities in children's educational outcomes, in addition to the vastly unequal levels of investment.