Corruption risks of private tutoring: case of Georgia

Abstract

The paper focuses on teacher-supplied private tutoring in the context of post-Soviet Georgia, and elucidates the ways in which teacher-supplied private tutoring can be related to educational corruption. The paper draws on data from in-depth interviews of 18 school teachers in different parts of Georgia in 2013. The findings of the qualitative study indicate challenges that teachers face as a result of their dual lives between schools and private tutoring. The challenges include moral dilemmas related to tutoring their students. The paper discusses how private tutoring becomes a “survival strategy” in the education system with low teacher pay, weak accountability system, and lack of monitoring efficacy. It highlights that the widely normalized practice in Georgia of teachers tutoring their students is not necessarily a form of corruption. However, it includes a high risk of corruption because of a thin line existing between teacher professional ethics and misconduct. Understanding how teachers rationalize tutoring their students contributes to the international research agenda by exploring teachers' perspectives on private tutoring, and offers insights into what constitutes teacher corruption in post-Soviet Georgia, making an important contribution to the international scholarship on educational corruption.

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