Browse by Topics
- Covid-19 Education Research for Recovery
- Early childhood
- K-12 Education
- Post-secondary education
- Access and admissions
- Education outside of school (after school, summer…)
- Educator labor markets
- Educator preparation, professional development, performance and evaluation
- Finance
- Inequality
- Markets (vouchers, choice, for-profits, vendors)
- Methodology, measurement and data
- Multiple outcomes of education
- Parents and communities
- Politics, governance, philanthropy, and organizations
- Program and policy effects
- Race, ethnicity and culture
- Standards, accountability, assessment, and curriculum
- Students with Learning Differences
Breadcrumb
Search EdWorkingPapers
Chirantan Chatterjee
India took a decisive step toward universal basic education by proclaiming a constitutionally-guaranteed Right to Education (RTE) Act in 2009 that called for full access of children aged 6-14 to free schooling. This paper considers the offsetting effects to RTE from induced expansion of private tutoring in the educationally competitive districts of India. We develop a unique database of registrations of new private educational institutions offering tutorial services by local district between 2001-2015. We estimate the causal impact of RTE on private supplemental education by comparing the growth of these private tutorial institutions in districts identified a priori as having very competitive educational markets to those that had less competitive educational markets. We find a strong impact of RTE on the private tutoring market and show that this holds across alternative definitions of highly competitive districts and a variety of robustness checks, sensitivity analyses, and controls. Finally, we provide descriptive evidence that these private tutoring schools do increase the achievement (and competitiveness) of students able to afford them.