britexpat: I don't believe it is that way. There are many factors that lead to parents hiring private tutors. Some students for example have a late start in school. There are several students from Afghanistan in the area where I live who missed their initial years of schooling due to the political situation in their country. The role of the private tutor comes in to fill in that gap and for the private tutor it becomes an uphill task. Then there are families where both the husband and the wife are at work and children have no one at home to look after their studies in school. The private tutor does just that. Added to this is the situation where a student is a slow learner and he needs additional help at home to keep up with his classmates. Until the time I made it out of the university, I was tutoring students just to support my expenses. I know from first-hand experience the difference a good tutor can make on his students. I also know that students get to ask their private tutors many questions that add to their knowledge which are away from what they gather from their school text books. This is due to the fact they get a a face-to-face interaction with the private tutor. These are questions they would not have had the opportunity to ask their school teachers. Having stated the above, I also agree with you in that in my country at least where education has now become commercialized, school teachers "deliberately" do not teach in the classes just so they could force the parents to hire them as private tutors allowing them some extra cash.