Czech Research Group for Shadow Education

Zhu, Y. & Šťastný, V. (2026). Stakeholders’ perceptions of shadow education in mainland China before and after the Double Reduction Policy: A systematic review of English-language research. Review of Education, 14, e70247.

In the past decade, research on shadow education in China has expanded rapidly, particularly following the 2021 Double Reduction Policy (DRP), which extended earlier regulatory measures by banning profit-seeking academic tutoring and sought to reduce students‘ academic workload and families‘ financial burden. Although many studies have examined stakeholders‘ perceptions, the literature remains fragmented and is rarely compared across groups or policy periods. This systematic review synthesizes English-language research indexed in Scopus and Web of Science on how key stakeholders in mainland China perceive shadow education and how research foci differ between studies addressing shadow education before and after the DRP. Because the DRP followed earlier regulation and its implementation continues to evolve, the policy serves here as an organizing time marker rather than a causal breakpoint. Thirty-four studies were synthesized. Academic pressure, peer competition and study burden recurred across parents, students and teachers, while group-specific themes included parental responsibility and financial strain, teachers‘ dual-role ethics and tutors‘ market adaptation. A clear shift in research attention also emerged: post-policy studies concentrated on perceptions of policy implementation and adaptation, leaving other topics aside. Coverage was uneven across regions and stakeholder groups, with students, school leaders and policymakers underrepresented and central and western China rarely studied. Because the review draws only on internationally indexed English-language studies, these are gaps in the international evidence base rather than in Chinese research as a whole.

Zhu, Y. (2026). At the intersection of policy and digital tools: Boundary work and professional identity among Chinese schoolteachers and shadow-education tutors under the double reduction policy. Teaching and Teacher Education, 183, 105825.

China’s Double Reduction Policy (DRP) restricts private tutoring and expands school-based after-school services. At the same time, digital and AI-supported tools are changing how teachers organise, monitor, and justify their work. These forces are usually studied separately. Based on semi-structured interviews with 24 educators in Sichuan (12 schoolteachers and 12 shadow-education tutors), this reflexive thematic analysis examines how policy and tool-mediated work jointly reshape professional identity through boundary work. The findings show three linked processes. First, DRP makes legitimacy more visibly graded across tenured teachers, non-tenured teachers, and tutors. Second, AI-supported systems and broader digital tools generate different forms of checking, monitoring, and replaceability anxiety. Third, participants use policy language and tool talk to claim legitimacy, compliance, and human judgement under unequal risk exposure. The study contributes to international debates on regulation, digitalisation, and teacher identity.

Kobakhidze, N., & Šťastný, V. (2026). Different contexts, similar mindsets? A comparative study of parental decision-making in private tutoring in Hong Kong and the Czech Republic. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 1-21.

This paper presents a comparative study of parental decision-making in private tutoring in Hong Kong and the Czech Republic, using similar qualitative approaches. It is based on interviews with 145 parents, exploring the factors, criteria, and strategies influencing their choices. The findings reveal both convergences and divergences in parental approaches. Key influences include rational choices, emotions, and cognitive biases, with both groups exhibiting ‘bounded rationality’. Despite differences in geography, culture, and education, the study reveals unexpected similarities, particularly regarding child agency – parents’ involvement of children in decisions about tutoring. The paper critically examines explanations for these trends, emphasising factors beyond culture, such as social class, global parenting images, and social media. It advocates for further research into the global influences shaping parental decisions and how these evolve in a globalised context. The study contributes to the field of shadow education and comparative education, offering new methodological and conceptual insights.

Šťastný, V. (2025). Shadow education: Weakening or strengthening dissatisfied parents’ exit and voice in education? Globalisation, Societies and Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2025.2549721

When schools fall short, parents face a choice: demand change, move their child, or quietly adapt. While much research has examined why parents become dissatisfied, little is known about how the availability and use of private tutoring (shadow education) shapes their next steps. This study addresses that gap, drawing on 65 in-depth interviews with Czech parents. Applying the Exit–Voice–Loyalty–Neglect (EVLN) framework, the findings reveal tutoring’s double-edged role. On one side, it cushions the impact of poor schooling – helping students keep up, reducing frustration, and enabling families to remain loyal or passive rather than exiting or voicing concerns. On the other, it can facilitate exit by preparing children for selective transfers, easing adaptation after school change, or substituting for school instruction in home education. In some cases, tutoring even strengthens voice, providing concrete evidence of school shortcomings and amplifying parental complaints. These mechanisms show that shadow education can both perpetuate systemic weaknesses by deflecting pressure for improvement and empower parents to challenge the status quo. The study highlights how structural features – such as early tracking and decentralised curricula – shape whether private tutoring sustains or disrupts institutional inertia, with implications for equity, accountability, and school reform.

Šťastný, V. (2025). ‘If the School Does Not Provide What I Expect, I Have to Supply It From Other Sources’: Czech Parents’ Dissatisfaction as a Driver of Shadow Education. European Journal of Education, 60(1), e70029. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.70029

Shadow education (various forms or types of private supplementary tutoring) and its implications and determinants have been explored by the scholarly literature, yet gaps remain in the understanding of its complex relationships with mainstream schooling in various national settings. This study reduces one of these gaps by scrutinising the role of parental dissatisfaction, exploring which aspects of schooling make dissatisfied parents consider procuring private supplementary tutoring for their children. Data for the qualitative study were gathered through individual, semistructured, in-depth interviews with 65 Czech parents. A maximum-variation sampling strategy was employed to gain insights from parents with different backgrounds and life situations. Parents who sought private tutoring because of their dissatisfaction with schooling listed a large array of school-related causes that triggered their decision. These were related to classroom instruction (e.g., inappropriate curriculum, grade inflation in student assessment), classroom organisation (e.g., unfavourable disciplinary climate and classroom composition), school communication (e.g., late teacher feedback on students‘ performance) and general school culture (e.g., unfavourable student–teacher relationships). The study has implications for teachers, schools and relatedly also policymakers by showing how their (in)actions and ignorance towards the quality of the service they offer may nurture the demand for private tutoring, which in turn may undermine their efforts to mitigate educational inequalities.

Šťastný, V., & Nekardová, B. (2025). Proxy involvement of Czech parents in education: Inner tensions and situational burdens behind decisions to buy private tutoring. Cambridge Journal of Education, 55(1), 113–133. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2025.2451282

While previous research on private tutoring has focused predominantly on its meso- or macro-level determinants, this qualitative study, anchored in the literature on parental involvement, explores proximal factors, including psychological and situational influences, that affect parental decisions to seek private tutoring. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with 65 Czech parents, who considered buying or had bought private tutoring for their child. It demonstrates that due to their internalised active parental role, parents feel a strong obligation to intervene when their educational expectations for their children are unmet. Private tutoring is considered when parents cannot or do not want be directly involved because of various barriers. Parents then use private tutoring as a compensatory mechanism, effectively outsourcing their involvement to a proxy: a tutoring provider. This study contributes to existing literature by presenting a conceptual model illustrating the interplay of these proximal factors, which can be further empirically tested.

Šťastný, V. (2024). The expansion and diversity of shadow education: Global perspectives, local contexts. Faculty of Education, Charles University. https://publications.cuni.cz/handle/20.500.14178/3168

Shadow education is an umbrella term for various types and forms of private tutoring, that is, tutoring provided in academic subjects on top of the regular school timetable, which is paid for by parents or pupils. Shadow education is a global phenomenon whose scale, characteristics, and also causes and implications vary depending on the local context. Shadow education has been the subject of academic research since the 1990s, and both the quantity and quality of research fi ndings have been increasing in the last decade.The aim of the monograph is 1) to map and evaluate the state and development of Czech and international research on this phenomenon; 2) compare the basic characteristics (form, degree of expansion) and document the macro-level determinants of shadow education across world regions. Special attention is paid to the specifi cs of shadow education in the Czech Republic. Methodologically, the monograph is based on the study and analysis of more than 500 peerreviewed journal studies or monographs and other types of sources published on the given topic since 1993 in English, German, French, Czech and other languages. Empirical, theoretical and overview studies as well as grey literature (statistical and analytical reports of international organizations or governments, media articles, etc.) were included.The quantity of empirical fi ndings on shadow education has increased signifi cantly in the last decade, as has the methodological quality of research investigations. The maturity of this research fi eld is evidenced, among others, by emerging meta-analyses on various topics, a large number of thematic issues of specialized journals and, in particular, the quantitative growth of the number of studies on shadow education in journals registered in the SCOPUS and Web of Science databases.In the world, shadow education is probably most widespread in East Asia, where the phenomenon stems from the culture of Confucianism and intense competition in high-stakes exams.Many countries in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia are characterized by political instability, economic problems or weak institutions, which leads to a greater willingness of teachers to make extra money from private tutoring (often unethically). In Europe, shadow education is traditionally most widespread in the southern states and also in the former Eastern Bloc countries, which is due to historical experience (transition to a market economy) and also to the low of parental confi dence in the quality of the education system. Shadow education is less common in the countries of North America (especially Canada) and Northern Europe, which are characterized by a low level of inequality, a low level of competition, low level of qualitative stratifi cation of educational organizations, and a high quality of educational systems that are able to meet well the individual educational needs of students.The monograph, supported by empirical studies, proves that the form and spread of shadow education on a macro-level in the world is determined by institutional (expansion of access to formal education, structure of educational systems including high-stake exams, trust in institutions, especially education), economic (level of economic development of the country, teachers‘ salaries), cultural (degree of egalitarianism, emphasis on effort and individual responsibility) and political factors (political reactions to the phenomenon and its implications).The book is supplemented by an overview table with information on shadow education in (almost) every country in the world and is, in a way, an „atlas“ of shadow education. Thepublication is primarily intended for an academic audience, and its ambition is to support researchers‘ interest in this important topic of contemporary comparative education.

Zhu, Y. (2024, August 14). “There is Demand, There is a Market”: Implementation of the Prohibitive Chinese Double Reduction Shadow Education Policy—From the Tutors’ Perspective. International Journal of Educational Reform. https://doi.org/10.1177/10567879241268035

Amidst the growing prominence of shadow education (known as supplementary tutoring) in China and the implementation of the Double Reduction Policy (prohibiting academic tutoring for compulsory schooling stage students), this study presents a comprehensive assessment of tutor responses to the implementation of the Double Reduction Policy and investigates the dynamic landscape of the shadow education sector, considering historical and contemporary developments. Employing a qualitative research approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of seven tutors, consisting of both institutional and private tutors. Thematic analysis was applied to the interview data to identify and interpret key themes. The findings show that while the Double Reduction Policy exhibits efficacy in certain aspects, the emergence of alternative approaches poses potential challenges to its overall effectiveness. Notably, this research offers a novel perspective by incorporating the viewpoints of tutors, shedding light on the potential trajectories of Chinese shadow education within the context of the Double Reduction Policy. Furthermore, this study contributes valuable insights to the scholarly discourse and serves as a pivotal reference for policymakers and stakeholders involved in the governance of the shadow education industry.