I would expect the nations that do a lot of tutoring should conclude that they are not spending enough public money on education.

I think the researchers are looking at the whole thing backwards.  Parents are not going to spend extra time and money on tutoring unless they think it’s necessary.
If they’re aren’t getting the results then they’ll withdraw their children from tutoring.  Simple

The researchers should be looking at each country’s state-run schools.  I would bet that the higher percentage of tutoring, the poorer the curricula and teaching methods, attitudes of teachers and school boards towards parents, etc. 

In otherwords:  no one spends extra time and money unless they think that they have no other recourse.

Bev, you are of course right that tutoring must work or the parents would withdraw. 

But the puzzle is that crappy school systems DON’T ‘predict’ more tutoring. 

I the parts of North York and Scarborough I frequent there are tutorial outfits every 10’. The huge amount are for middle to affluent Chinese and Koreans and now Iranians who know their kids are smart but behind in English.  They want the fastest possible route to catching up.

We have a fundamental flaw in our expectations. Collectively we want ALL students to do better but individually we want our own kids to stand out at the top. This is a deep contradiction.

Hence tutoring to catch up and tutoring for advantage.

As discussed in previous blogs, Tom, household income also plays a huge role in determining which children are sent to tutors.  Another variable is culture—just as Doug just has pointed out in this blog.
These are reasons for so much tutoring along with parents knowing that the job won’t be done properly in state-run schools.

Does GEMS really think that in a wealthy neighborhood where a large number of students are tutored that the schools could get away with slacking off even more?  Obviously parents who are spending the money and time to get their kids the best wouldn’t put up with it.

As for the Gems efficiency study, tutoring was seen in this context - “the quantity of tutoring received out of school time is not considered as a system input, but will contribute to the output (pupil attainment via PISA scores).” Making a tentative conclusion - “Our results suggest that receiving extra tutoring does not contribute to higher rankings in terms of educational performance.”

It is a bit more complex than what the Gems report has alluded to.  Little research has taken place on private tutoring. However, there is two camps. The K to 12 crowd states that private tutoring has no impact on student performance. http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/5/5/1/8/5/p551854_index.html?phpsessid=nbpfg16u39i0nf8e1iq4snh4c6

The other camp, states the opposite. The next two studies will show the complexity of studying private tutoring.  Does Private Tutoring Work? http://www.iwaee.org/papers sito 2013/Hof.pdf And here - How Does Private Tutoring Corrupt A Teachers’  Performance Pay System - http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~ngkaho/Research/Tutoring.pdf

For the first study, it was found that private tutoring significantly increases outcomes in mathematics and reading achievement. For the second study, it concludes tentatively that private tutoring depends on the school quality.

The K to 12 doesn’t dare to look deeper into private tutoring. Instead, the focus has been in countries like China to Korea, rather than the Western countries. More research is needed, but for the most part private tutoring directly benefits the individual student. Achievement is the natural outcome of private tutoring.

North York: indeed there are tutoring outlets or schools on every block almost.

And indeed most of the children are chinese, korean, some iranian, some russians, west-indians, est-europeans.

There are two very distinct patterns of tutoring
1) English language or high school credits high school for kids that have come to Canada at the beginning or during high school.
A lot of them tend to be crappy, high school credit-granting businesses.

2) Math and sometimes reading/ writing schools for elementary grades for kids born here to immigrant parents or kids that have come to canada at 2-3 year olds.

Immigrant parents who know what solid elementary education looks like don’t put up with the crap and leave their kids not learning for too long.
They are too aware that kids do not discover things on their own. They know that good teachers teaching good methods are the most important for young children because they have experienced it.

What difference does it make whether it works or not? People who want to use it can use it. Those who don’t believe in it won’t use it.

Some people want their kids to catch up. Others want to give their kids an advantage without going all in with private education.

I actually see private tutors as the enemy of private, charter and voucher education.

Does GEM look at the countries’ curricula when developing their hypotheses?  If not I’m baffled at the way they think!

Bev, this was just a sideline in their study, something that popped up unexpectedly.  They were looking at teacher salaries vs national outcomes.  Check out their site, they are an interesting group. http://www.gemsedsolutions.com/

EQAO released the school-by-school numbers and the TDSB has been flat for the last three years, only 70% of grade 3 students meeting minimal proficiency in Math.  (Slight improvements in Literacy.) 

https://eqaoweb.eqao.com/eqaoweborgprofile/Download.aspx?rptType=DSROT&_Mident=66052&YEAR=2014&assessmentType=3&orgType=B&nF=4P1fHxNTxu~plus~JFRozL86MdQ~plus~V80kdmdszJ8MOYhvjXRI=&displayLanguage=E 

OK, we know the schools are declining, that’s no surprise.  But over those last three years, tutoring clinics seem to have opened at every street corner.  The number of students being tutored in the city has probably doubled.

How is it possible that all that tutoring didn’t show up in the EQAO results?

Did all that tutoring make NO difference?  Or did it somehow exactly match a decline in the quality of teaching at the TDSB?

And would the explosion of tutoring have happened even if the TDSB was showing steady progress?  Did parents know that the TDSB was declining before the numbers came out?

The lack of national correlation between outcomes and the amount of tutoring is a totally unimportant question, but I found it fascinating when I penned this guest blog.

Bev - http://www.gemsedsolutions.com/
And they do curriculum consults as well.