Learning in the shadows: parents’ investments, family burden, and students’ workload in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Abstract

Privatization, marketization, investment, and competition of education have become a global phenomenon with significant implications. While research on demand and patterns of shadow education are increasingly available across the world, very little is known about the scope of parents’ investments, family burden, and students’ workload. This paper focuses on shadow education in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Shadow education is defined as fee-based private supplementary tutoring that replicates the official school system. The study conducted on shadow education uses an explanatory sequential mixed methods design with quantitative data from questionnaires of 354 participants, involving students and parents, and qualitative data from interviews of 24 participants, including students, parents, and teachers. The aim of this paper is to examine how parents’ investments in their children’s private tutoring create high expectations and competition that bring financial burden to families in a disadvantaged society. It addresses the experiences of students’ workloads due to extra lessons of several subjects in a day, exam preparation pressure, and parents’ and peer pressures in the desire not to lag behind. It shows how students deal with time shortages for workloads from extra lessons and deprive themselves of sports and social activities, which are part and parcel of being a mentally, emotionally, and physically healthy human being. The study draws on the theories of educational privatization, competition, investment, and capability approach, which are then associated with the research contexts of this paper.