Dr. Maia Chankseliani

Department of Education, University of Oxford

Chankseliani, M. (2013) ‘Financial burden of university attendance in Georgia: Implications for rural students’,

Prospects (forthcoming)

Chankseliani, M. (2012a). Mixed-methods study of higher education access in Georgia: Does location

matter? (Doctoral thesis). Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK. Chankseliani, M. (2012b) ‘Spatial Inequities in Higher Education Admissions in Georgia: Likelihood of

Choosing and Gaining Access to Prestigious Higher Education Institutions’, Working Paper, Center for Social

Sciences

Darakhvelidze, K. (2008). The university entrance examinations: the effect of admissions test preparation on

private tutoring in Georgia (master’s thesis). Columbia University, New York.

GeoStat. (2010). National Statistics Office of Georgia data. Tbilisi, Georgia: National Statistics Office of

Georgia.

Gorgodze, S. (2006). What hampers the equalizing force of corruption-free university examinations?

Unpublished paper.

IMF. (2003). Georgia: Poverty reduction strategy paper (Country Report No. 03/265). Washington DC:

International Monetary Fund.

MES. (2009). EMIS data on secondary schools and school graduates. Ministry of Education and Science of

Georgia.

MES. (2012a). Ministry of Education data on HEIs. Retrieved from

http://mes.gov.ge/content.php?id=1855&lang=geo

MES. (2012b). EMIS data on schools in Georgia. Retrieved from

http://catalog.edu.ge/index.php?module=statistics

NAEC. (2009). The Unified National Examinations database.

OSI. (2006). Education in a hidden marketplace: Monitoring of private tutoring. Overview and country reports.

New York: Education Support Program of the Open Society Institute Network of Education Policy Centers.

Shapiro, M., Nakata, S., Chakhaia, L., & Zhvania, E. (2007). Evaluation of the Ilia Chavchavadze program in

reforming and strengthening Georgia’s schools. Japan: Padeco.

World Bank. (2008). Georgia poverty assessment ( No. 4440-GE). Human Development Sector Unit South

Caucasus Country Unit Europe and Central Asia Region.

For further information Please contact maia.chankseliani@education.ox.ac.uk

Marketization of education in Georgia: equitable access to

quality education

Main trends since 1990s

Emergence of private providers at all levels of education;

Wider possibilities of school choice;

Introduction of across-the-board per student voucher financing of general and higher education;

Education recipients allowed to pay the cost of private general and higher education with public

vouchers;

Government consolidating the existing public education provider network.

11% of schools are private (MES, 2012b)

57% of HEIs are private (MES, 2012a)

80% of the sample from Georgia used private

tutoring as a supplement to formal schooling

(OSI, 2006)

Two arguments against the

increase of market role in

education:

Promotes inequities

Does not promote societal good

Quality: private schooling & tutoring

Private school graduates score, on average, significantly higher on

university selection exams when compared to public secondary school

graduates. The mean score on a foreign language test for private school

graduates is 60.9, whereas the average score for public school graduates

is 51.7 (Chankseliani, 2012a).

FIGURE 1. FOREIGN LANGUAGE SCORE DISTRIBUTION BY SCHOOL

TYPE

Another study has shown that private tutoring investment explains

significant variation in student performance on higher education

entrance exams (Darakhvelidze, 2008).

Private school graduates are significantly more likely to gain access to

the most prestigious HEIs than public school graduates, and five out of

the six most prestigious HEIs are private (Chankseliani, 2012b).

Availability: private schooling

99.5%

98.8%

91.9%

89.2%

85.9%

0.5%

1.2%

8.1%

10.8%

14.1%

75% 80% 85% 90% 95% 100%

Mountainous villages

Villages

Towns

Big cities

The capital

public school private school

FIGURE 2. PRIVATE SCHOOL ATTENDANCE BY GEOGRAPHIC AREA

Districts with higher proportions of urban residents house higher

proportion of private schools (r=.80**).

Districts with higher proportions of residents with HE, house higher

proportion of private schools (r=.84**).

Almost one-third of municipalities, all of them largely rural, do not

have a single private school (MES, 2012b).

72% of the pupils enrolled in private schools come from the capital

and five biggest cities (MES, 2009), whereas only 42% of the country

population resides there (GeoStat, 2010).

Interviews with rural disadvantaged families show that they face

two main impediments in the process of deciding on private

tutoring: affordability and accessibility (Chankseliani, 2012b).

The incidence of private tutoring is higher in urban (39%) than in

rural (17%) areas (World Bank, 2008).

The incidence of private tutoring is higher among children from

higher SES quintiles - 50% from the richest quintile and only 17%

from the poorest quintile go to private tutors (World Bank, 2008).

Overall, those who come from urban areas and higher SES

quintiles have a 4 – 25% higher probability of using private

tutoring services than those who belong to poorer families and

reside in rural areas (World Bank, 2008).

Availability: private tutoring

Private investment in education

Richer families in Georgia spend significantly more on education

than poorer families: 43% of total private expenditure on education

comes from the top 10% of the richest families, compared with the

0.2% share coming from the bottom 10% (Shapiro et al., 2007).

Urban households invested, on average, three times more in

education when compared to the spending of rural households (IMF,

2003).

Underfunding from public sources has been reflected in an increase

in private expenditure on education to the detriment of equity

(Shapiro et al., 2007).

50% of sample from Georgia maintained that private tutoring is

the only way of acquiring high quality education (OSI, 2006).

Gorgodze (2006) found that the following are the main reasons for

applicants to decide on hiring a private tutor:

tutoring classes help students organise their thoughts better

there is a wide-spread belief that one cannot pass university

entrance tests without private tutoring

students feel more at ease to ask questions to a private tutor

rather than a school teacher

students feel they have more time for discussions at private

lessons.

Affordability of private education

When compared to average monthly income, mean rates of HE

tuition in Georgia are high. The mean tuition in 2006-2009 was

$1187 with the highest rate of $10120. An average Georgian adult

would need to work for twenty months to cover average tuition

cost for HE in 2006-2009 (Chankseliani, 2013).

Publicly-provided vouchers do not cover the full price of

privately-provided general or higher education; neither can they

be spent on private tutoring.

One of the interviewees who happened to be a teacher at a local

school shared her thoughts: “villagers here […] cannot afford

private tutoring. This is a problem in villages not in urban centres.

Villagers are very poor. People hardly make ends meet” (Oni 4,

2010, cited in Chankseliani, 2012a).

Demand for private tutoring

References