The Heterogeneous Effects of Participation in Shadow Education on Mental Health of High School Students in Taiwan.

I-Chien Chen,Ping-Yin Kuan

doi:10.3390/ijerph18031222

Abstract

The effect of shadow education or private supplementary education (PSE) on school achievement has been prolifically studied, but its impact on well-being remains understudied. This study examines the heterogeneous effect of PSE participation on school achievement and depression symptoms among high schoolers in Taiwan. The study uses panel data of the Taiwan Upper Secondary Database (TUSD) in the 2014 and 2015 academic years. We join the inverse-probability-of-treatment weighting (IPTW) approach and the seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) model to estimate the effects of PSE participation patterns on two correlated outcomes, comprehensive assessment of high school entrance examination and self-reported depression symptoms in the 11th grade. The latent class analysis identifies five PSE participation patterns: always-taker, early-adopter, dropout, late-adopter, and explorer, to predict the effect of PSE on the scores of entrance examination and later depression symptoms in high school (n = 7708, mean age = 15.33). The findings suggest that PSE participation in junior high is positively associated with academic achievement. However, PSE participation also increases depression symptoms, particularly in the case of always-takers. In other words, while always-takers increase their school achievement in transition into high school, their risks of suffering from depression are also higher than their peers.

Highlights

Results early-adopters, and late-adopters tend to have parents with a semi-professional or profesTable presents descriptive across the patterns of whofamsional job,1at least some collegestatistics education, middle-class family income withThose an intact are the always-takers during junior high have a clearly advantaged family, school, and ily
Our findings suggest that late adopters risk the trade-off between school achievement and depression symptoms if all students were randomly assigned to participate in Private supplementary education (PSE)
Since we focus on the impact of various long-term PSE patterns on overall academic achievement and mental health, our findings could be interpreted as the average effects of these PSE patterns across cram-schooled subjects

Summary

Introduction

Private supplementary education (PSE) is a form of shadow education and is commonly called “buxi” or cram schooling in Taiwan. PSE offers private, fee-paying supplementary education for academic subjects beyond school walls [1,2,3]. One of the primary purposes of PSE participation is to obtain high scores at the nationally administered school or college entrance examination, especially in countries where the competition for enrolling into a more prestigious high school or university is fierce [1,4,5,6,7]. Education researchers noted the prevalence of PSE participation in East Asian countries in the 1990s [8,9]. PSE participation has become a worldwide phenomenon in the 21st century [3,10]

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Discussion

Conclusion