India’s shadow classrooms: Who gets to learn after school?

Mitul Surana

Every evening, across India, millions of students leave school only to head to another classroom, whether a tuition centre, a coaching institute, or a private tutor’s home. What was once a supplement to formal schooling has evolved into a widespread, unequal parallel system. New data from the Comprehensive Modular Survey on Education (2025), released by the National Statistical Office (NSO), offers a clear picture of how entrenched this “shadow education” system has become and who it leaves behind.

Nationally, 27% of students are enrolled in private coaching. But this headline figure masks stark disparities across regions and social groups that raise deeper questions about access, equity, and the role of the state. 

The most striking pattern is geographic. A cluster of eastern states, including West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, and Jharkhand, forms what might be called India’s “coaching belt”, where private tutoring has shifted from optional to near-essential. 

West Bengal stands out: 74.6% of its students take private coaching. In Odisha, the figure is 57.1%; in Bihar, 52.5%; and in Jharkhand, 39.7%. All are well above the national average of 27%. Several northeastern states, including Tripura and Manipur, show similarly high participation rates, suggesting a broader regional pattern rather than isolated anomalies.

What is striking is that many of these states are among India’s poorer regions. This is not simply a story of affluent households purchasing an advantage, but a wider phenomenon: families across the income distribution are paying for tutoring because they do not trust the formal school system to deliver adequate learning outcomes.

The contrast with other parts of the country is stark. In Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, participation is in single digits, with similarly low levels in parts of southern India. In these states, coaching remains selective. In the eastern belt, it is close to unavoidable.

Expenditure patterns reinforce this divide. Households in West Bengal spend an average of Rs 7,878 per student annually on coaching – more than three times the national average of Rs 2,409. Odisha (Rs 5,074) and Bihar (Rs 3,221) also exceed the national average by a wide margin. That Bihar and Odisha, among the poorest states in India, record such high spending underscores how deeply embedded coaching has become, even at significant financial cost.

Several factors likely explain this concentration: historically entrenched tutoring cultures, concerns about school quality, intense competition for limited higher education seats, and a self-reinforcing social norm where coaching becomes a marker of parental investment. Once most children in a neighbourhood attend tuition classes, not sending one’s child risks leaving them behind, regardless of whether the coaching is actually effective.

While the survey report does not publish estimates by caste group, our analysis using unit-level data reveals a hierarchy closely aligned with India’s social stratification.

Among students from general category households, 34.5% were enrolled in private coaching. The figure drops to 26.3% for OBC students and 26.4% for SC students before falling sharply to 14.4% for ST students. In effect, ST students are less than half as likely as their general-category counterparts to access private tutoring.

The expenditure gap is even more pronounced. General category students spend an average of Rs 4,129 per year on coaching, four times the Rs 1,030 recorded for ST students. SC and OBC students fall in between at Rs 1,953 and Rs 2,083, respectively.

These disparities matter because private tutoring in India tends to function less as a remedial tool for struggling students and more as a means for gaining competitive advantage in high-stakes examinations. Unequal access to coaching is therefore likely to translate into unequal outcomes in board exams, entrance tests, and access to higher education and employment.

Taken together, the geographic and caste-based patterns point to a common dynamic: access to supplementary education is stratified along the same lines as India’s broader social and economic inequalities.

In states where public education systems face persistent challenges, private coaching has emerged as a de facto substitute that families must pay for. At the same time, disadvantaged social groups, particularly Scheduled Tribes, remain significantly less able to access this parallel system. 

This creates a layered inequality. The formal system promises universal access through policies like the Right to Education Act. But alongside it operates a vast, fee-charging ecosystem that is neither universal nor equitable and that increasingly shapes educational outcomes.

India’s education policy continues to focus overwhelmingly on schools: infrastructure, curricula, and enrolment. Yet for a substantial share of students, learning now extends beyond school hours into an unregulated and largely invisible market for private tutoring.

This raises difficult policy questions. Should the State attempt to regulate the coaching sector? Should access to supplementary learning be subsidised for disadvantaged groups? Or should the priority be to improve school quality to reduce dependence on private tutoring altogether? There are no easy answers. But ignoring the shadow education system is no longer tenable.

The NSO data makes one thing clear: India’s education system does not end at the school gate. For millions, the real contest over learning and opportunity continues after school, in paid classrooms that remain outside the ambit of public policy. Treating schooling as synonymous with learning risks overlooking this parallel system and the inequalities it sustains.

(The writer is an assistant professor in economics at IIM Indore)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.