The study and measurement of private tuition or shadow education is fundamental for expanding knowledge about education in Spain and, especially, on sources of educational inequity within the country’s school system. A lack of adequate data has meant that the study of this market in Spain is rather uncommon. There are few academic publications that attempt to estimate the dimensions of the phenomenon, usually taking advantage of certain questions from tests such as PISA or TIMSS (Runte-Geidel, 2013 and 2014; Runte-Geidel & Femia, 2015; Vázquez-Reina, 2007); due to their very design, these surveys are not conceived to adequately detect the size of the private tuition market. 

However, Spain currently has two sources of information on consumption of private tuition by families: the Survey on Family Budgets (Encuesta de Presupuestos Familiares, EPF), which is conducted annually, and the Survey on Household Spending on Education (Encuesta del Gasto de los Hogares en Educación, EGHE) which, based on a subsample of the EPF, looks in depth at the different types of education spending with a greater level of disaggregation, although the periodicity with which it is conducted is undefined.

Both surveys are, separately, insufficient to analyse fully the patterns of consumption of private tuition in Spain. On the one hand, the EPF has methodological problems that make it underestimate the dimension of consumption on the part of families, partly due to the exclusion of certain non-curricular subjects, as well as due to the reduced period of collaboration of the household in the survey, which generates this downwards bias if the consumption is concentrated over time. In the case of the EGHE, despite overcoming these methodological difficulties due to it being only focused on completely covering educational spending, it provides very little information on the household in which students reside, which makes it nearly impossible to study how the spending is distributed based on the economic capacity of the household, the autonomous community of residence, or the ownership of the school which the pupils attend. Fortunately, thanks to the EGHE sample being based on a sub-sample of households that took part in the EPF, and with the collaboration of the National Statistics Institute (INE), it has been possible to merge the two surveys and, in this way, obtain the best from both.

Figure 1 shows the average spend per pupil on private tuition (which includes catch-up classes on curriculum subjects, language learning, artistic teaching and other studies) during the 2019/2020 academic year in the different educational stages (from age 3 to 18 years), disaggregating what part of the average spend corresponds with each type of private tuition. The first point worth highlighting is the enormous amount represented by this spending, even in such early stages as the 2nd cycle in Early Childhood Education, when it already reaches €117 per pupil per year. In aggregate terms, this represents a spend of €1.69 billion, a figure much higher than the €850 million that is estimated with the EPF, as shown by Moreno (2022). Secondly, it is equally relevant to highlight the rapid growth of private tuition as pupils advance through the stages of the educational system, since the average spend in Primary nearly multiplies by two that registered in the Early Childhood stage, while the average spending per pupil in Bachillerato is again double the average spend in Primary.

Finally, the composition of the spending is also transformed in the different educational stages. While, in the early stages, the weight of spending on private tuition in artistic teaching is especially relevant, with a value close to 33%, this percentage gradually decreases as pupils advance through the different educational stages. This lower weight is compensated by the constant growth experienced by private tuition in core curriculum subjects, which increases from representing 20% of the average spend at the Early Childhood Stage to 44% in Bachillerato.

One of the main concerns that has motivated a large part of the research in various countries on the private tuition market is its potential negative effect on inequality in educational outcomes. If students from more affluent homes receive a disproportionate quantity of private tuition with respect to their peers with fewer resources, then educational inequalities could grow increasingly as the size of this market grows in Spain. Thanks to the process of merging the EPF and EGHE surveys, the total equivalent spending per household is available as a variable associated with their economic capacity, based on which quartiles of economic capacity are generated. 

In particular, the average spending per pupil changes substantially according to the economic capacity of the household where each resides, as can be seen in the left-hand panel in figure 2: pupils who form part of the 25% of households with fewer resources present an average spend of €140, little more than the average spend observed among all pupils in the 2nd cycle of the Early Childhood Education. In contrast, households included among the 25% with a greater economic capacity spend, on average, €430 per pupil, a slightly higher amount than the average spend observed across the entire set of Bachillerato pupils. This comparison highlights how private tuition puts pupils who come from wealthier families in a better position.

The composition of private tuition received by pupils with a higher economic capacity is very different with respect to that received by pupils with fewer resources, as can be observed in the right-hand panel of figure 2: while for the former, private tuition in languages represents 55% of their average spending, for the latter it represents 36%. Similarly, as the economic capacity of the household to which each pupil belongs increases, so does the weight of private tuition in artistic activities and, to a lesser extent, of other private tuition. The gain in weight of these three categories as one advances in income distribution is compensated by the fall of relative importance of private tuition in core curriculum subjects, which drops from representing 53% of the average spend among pupils in the first quartile to 22% for pupils from households in the last quartile.

Although studying the spend per pupil is relevant, it may offer an incomplete image of reality in cases where some pupils, independently of their position in income distribution, concentrated a large part of the spending on private tuition. For this reason, complementing the data on average spend by quartiles with the effective percentage of pupils who attend private tuition can be especially helpful.

Figure 3 shows the percentage of pupils who use private tuition, disaggregated by type of private tuition and by equivalent spending quartiles. In this case, despite important differences continuing to exist, these are fewer than those observed in the average spend per pupil. While a third of pupils from the lowest quartile of economic capacity takes private tuition, the percentage reaches 57% in the case of pupils in the highest quartile. A part of the difference between pupils according to the economic capacity of their households may remain hidden for two reasons: firstly, that pupils from more affluent families consume a higher quantity of private tuition or, secondly, that the price per hour for the private tuition that they receive may be substantially higher.

Although the number of months in which each pupil took private tuition is unknown, the percentage of pupils who consumed, over the course of the academic year, more than one category of private tuition, which in figure 3 appears as “combinations”, may serve as an indicator of the volume of tuition hours received. While it cannot be ruled out that higher prices have played a relevant role, the percentage of pupils who receive more than one type of private tuition increases with the economic capacity of the household, although it is true that this percentage barely varies when passing from the third to the fourth quartile. Again, the patterns noticed in figure 2 are maintained, with a greater weight of languages and of artistic learning for pupils from higher-income households, which suggests that they use private tuition for a purpose more associated with distinction, whereas the composition of private tuition chosen by their classmates from poorer homes suggests that their ultimate aim is curricular reinforcement.

Finally, the general graph is shown for the four different education stages. In the first phases (Early Childhood and Primary stages), the relationship between participation and economic capacity is less, and the weight of non-official tuition in artistic teaching is especially high. However, in the transition between Primary and Compulsory Secondary Education, the differences in participation in private tuition between quartiles grow considerably, reaching over 75% of pupils in the high economic quartile receiving private tuition.

In the light of these data, and compared with the study by Moreno (2022), it is evident that both the size of the market and the impact made by private tuition in Spain has been underestimated. Private tuition has been transformed in recent years from a residual to a substantial part of educational spending, reaching 15% of total family spending on education (Moreno & Martínez, 2023). The appearance of these data from the INE, through the EGHE, opens up, however, more questions than answers regarding the impact that these classes have on academic performance and how they interact with such relevant variables as the repeating of an academic year or reinforcement lessons within schools. To respond to these and other questions, it will be necessary to incorporate into future research studies data on the academic performance of each pupil, with additional and detailed information on their consumption of private tuition outside of the school, which, as does the INE, will ideally incorporate reliable economic information provided by the household.

Moreno, J.M. (2022): “Educación En la Sombra” en España: cómo las clases particulares se están convirtiendo en un bien de primera necesidad”. EsadeEcPol

Moreno, J.M. & Martínez, A. (2023): “Educación en la Sombra en España: Una radiografía del mercado de clases particulares por etapa escolar, capacidad económica de los hogares, titularidad de centro y Comunidad Autónoma”. EsadeEcPol. 

Runte-Geidel, A. (2013): “La incidencia de las Clases Particulares en España a través de los datos de PISA”, Revista Española de Educación Comparada, 21. 

Runte-Geidel, A. (2015): La educación a la sombra en países del sur de Europa y sus implicaciones sobre la equidad, Revista Española de Educación Comparada, 25. 

Runte-Geidel, A. & Femia Marzo, P. (2015): Shadow Education in Spain: Examining social inequalities through the analysis of PISA results. European Education, 47. 

Vázquez-Reina, M. (2007): «Empresas de clases particulares», Eroski Consumer