In search of a school façade: Explaining the centrality of private tutoring among high-performing students in Egypt

Abstract

This article contributes to the debates about the priorities of education reform in Egypt and approaches to reducing the students’ reliance on private tutoring. It presents the results of five focus group discussions with first year students in the Faculty of Economics and Political Science (FEPS), Cairo University, to understand their experiences with private tutoring during the high stakes final year of high school. The article concludes that private tutoring represents a façade of the pedagogical, social, and emotional support functions that schools should perform. This contributes to our understanding of why private tutoring in Egypt has come to supplant, rather than supplement, formal schooling.