80% of 5-year-olds in South Korea receive private tutoring
In UK, gap between low- and high-income tutoring rates just 2 percentage points
More spending on education, but social mobility stalls
Low-income families spend more, but wealthy families are not pulling back
Children of high-income parents still hold the competitive edge
A global wave of private tutoring is sweeping across income groups, with parents everywhere pouring more money and time into their children's education amid intensifying competition for elite universities and high-paying jobs. Yet children are finding it increasingly difficult to surpass their parents' economic standing, The Economist reported Sunday (local time).
The report describes a worldwide spread of so-called "intensive parenting" — a concentrated investment of time and money in children's development. Piano and other music lessons, coding camps and sports training, once the preserve of the wealthy, are now reaching families across the income spectrum. Analysts say parents at all income levels are actively investing in education from an early age, determined not to let their children fall behind.
S. Korea leads in private tutoring; one in three French students also enrolled
The Economist singled out South Korea as a prime example of a country where families spend heavily on private tutoring from an early age. According to a 2025 survey on private education spending among elementary, middle and high school students, released by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Statistics, 75.7 percent of South Korean students at those levels participate in private tutoring — roughly three in four.
Participation among 5-year-olds reached 80 percent. Even among households earning less than 3 million won ($2,240) a month, the tutoring participation rate stood at 52.8 percent.
Education spending is also rising across other parts of Asia. About 27 percent of students in India receive private tutoring, a share that climbs to 31 percent in urban areas. In China, education spending has grown fastest in relatively poorer regions.
The trend is spreading in Europe as well. In France, one in three students between the ages of 15 and 18 receives private tutoring.
In the United Kingdom, private tutoring rates among state school students are converging across income groups. According to the Sutton Trust, a British education charity, 37 percent of state school students from the bottom quarter of households by income use private tutoring — just 2 percentage points below the 39 percent rate among those from the top quarter. In London, the tutoring rate among state school students reaches 45 percent, meaning nearly one in two receives private instruction.
Heavy tutoring spending fails to lift social mobility — wealthy families still have the edge
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The central problem is that higher private tutoring rates do not necessarily translate into greater upward mobility for children. Lower-income families are spending more on education than before, but wealthy families are not reducing their own investment. More households are entering the competition, but the families holding the advantage within it have not changed much.
In practice, the likelihood of upward mobility stagnated in France and Spain over the past decade and fell sharply in Singapore and South Korea.
At Peking University, one of China's most prestigious institutions, the share of students from rural backgrounds has declined. Between 1978 and 1998, roughly one-third of incoming students came from rural areas; by 2021, that share had fallen to about one-sixth. The drop has outpaced the overall decline in the rural share of China's total population.
Even among university graduates, gaps tied to parents' educational attainment and economic background continue to widen.
According to the Sutton Trust, 30 percent of Americans from families where neither parent attended university reached the top 20 percent of earners. Among those whose parents did receive a university education, that figure was 41 percent — 11 percentage points higher.
The university graduation rate among those from non-graduate households rose 10 percentage points over the past decade, yet the income advantage a degree confers on that group actually fell by 11 percentage points. Access to higher education has expanded, but the economic reward a degree delivers has diminished.
A similar pattern has emerged in the United Kingdom. According to the Resolution Foundation, a British think tank, university graduates who grew up in low-income households — as measured by eligibility for free school meals — earned 7 percent less than peers who studied the same subject at the same institution, a decade after graduation. Even with identical education, the family environment in which a person grows up continues to shape their eventual earnings.
The Economist concluded that "the likelihood of children surpassing their parents economically has stagnated or declined in many countries" and that "wealthy parents still hold the advantage in the race to secure their children's futures."
yckim6452@heraldcorp.com
