Tutoring—An Emerging Phenomenon in the Romanian Education System

Abstract

This paper, without intending to be exhaustive, is a presentation of an increasingly prominent social reality: the tutoring of pupils, as a parallel educational activity complementary to the education system, as a form of non-formal education, or as an alternative option for students’ parents to support them in their social success. Our research aimed to identify the perception/opinions of the beneficiaries of these tutoring activities, in relation to the relevant aspects of such activities, such as the way they are organized and carried out, the type and motivational level of students participating in such activities, the real dimensions of the phenomenon as manifested in Romanian society, etc. In order to achieve the purpose of our research, a questionnaire, with open-ended and closed-ended questions, was given to a significant number of people bearing the title of student, who had completed high school studies only 1–4 years ago. Based on the research carried out, it was possible to identify a hierarchy of motivational factors that determine whether students resort to tutoring; the causes of the occurrence and expansion of this phenomenon; and the opinions of the beneficiaries of tutoring services towards the organization and conduct of these activities. At the end of the article, some measures are presented that could optimize the balance between formal and non-formal education in Romanian society.

1. Introduction

Many of the current generation of students have “subscribed” to an educational service carried out by a teacher, called tutoring, which is already a global social phenomenon. This financially-compensated service consists of transmitting information from the teacher/tutor, within a predetermined time interval, usually two hours, to 1–10 students. Since this is a paid service that involves minors, it is controlled by the students’ parents, who financially support this activity [1,2].

Thus, tutoring belongs to a category of contemporary social phenomena that raise a series of questions for representatives of institutions empowered to coordinate the education system, for those in judicial and fiscal control, and among public opinion in several age segments [3,4].

Tutoring is also widely spread throughout the world, especially in economically developing countries, as a result of malfunctioning education systems or as a product of competitive education systems [5]. Therefore, tutoring, as an educational activity, is characterized by the fact that it represents a form of parallel/complementary education to the education system [6,7]. The organization of student-tutoring activities is based on the organization and systematization of the education system. In this context, tutoring has the role of transmitting/deepening information/knowledge and developing/practising the intellectual skills of students that have not been acquired or formed by participating in the school program [8]. The actual realization of tutoring activities involves a series of psychic/intellectual/material/time resources, but also has risks for all those involved in this type of activity [9,10].

Being perceived as the most accessible alternative for families to ensure the acquisition of missing knowledge by students, the phenomenon of tutoring creates a fierce parallelism to the educational systems implemented in all the states of the world [11,12,13].

The amplitude of the phenomenon permits differentiations depending on the level of education of students/the residence environment of students/subjects of study/the economic level of the state/national educational policy and strategies; and it highlights a causal link between systemic deficiencies/quality of the educational act and the evolution of the phenomenon of the tutoring of students [14,15,16].

Description of the Romanian Education System

The Romanian education system is a national system through which the formal education of the young is ensured, having as its educational ideal, and fundamental goal, the formation of responsible, autonomous, harmonious personalities, able to integrate properly into society. Consequently, it is a system centered on the primary beneficiaries of the educational process, namely: preschoolers, pupils, and students.

At the same time, through educational policy documents, the Romanian education system is characterized as an open system, connected to European standards (study documents obtained within the Romanian education system being recognized on the European/world labor market); a qualitative system ensuring training for all qualification levels of the internal and external workforce; a teleological system whose functionality is based on fundamental/axiological, ethical, moral principles/values; in order to facilitate understanding, the organizational structure of the Romanian education system will be presented below, according to the National Education Law nr. 1/2011.

The schooling of children aged 6–16 years is mandatory in Romania and is ensured by approximately 5950 public pre-university education units (whose financing is ensured by the state budget) with legal status, to which are added a considerable number of educational units assigned to them, as well as over 995 pre-university private education units with legal status.

The transition of students from a lower class to a higher one is carried out gradually, by going through and completing each subject included in the educational plan/curriculum, established at national level by normative acts, and by passing the national evaluation exams at the end of grades II, IV, VIII, respectively, XII/XIII (baccalaureate).

The accession to undergraduate studies and the acquisition of student status is conditional on—firstly—passing the national exam for the completion of high school studies, a baccalaureate that can be held in different disciplines, depending on the profile of the graduating student. A second requirement is the passing of the admission exam organized by university education institutions, through their own autonomy and in accordance with their internal regulations.

The training of young people over the age of 19 who opt for bachelor’s/master’s/doctoral/postgraduate university studies, is ensured through the 46 civilian state higher-education institutions, 7 military state higher-education institutions and 34 accredited private higher-education institutions, an integral part of the national education system, offering places for study financed by the state budget, as well as places with a tuition fee paid by students.

Thus, education as a whole is a complex, dynamic process, a form of manifestation of the socio-human reality, a form of practical, effective human action that can be analyzed through the prism of the model of practical human action [17], structured as follows: (a) praxis—represented by the subject, in this case, the educator; (b) object of action—represented by the learner/beneficiary of education; (c) situation—represented by the educational process that takes place in an open pedagogical field; (d) effective realization—strongly determined by the social environment.

From the practice of exercising the teaching profession, but also from the specialized literature, in the effective realization of formal education, at the level of each component, dysfunctions may arise [2]:

• At the level of praxis—in respect of the educator: the use of unattractive teaching/learning methods for students, improper management of the time allocated to the didactic act, depreciation of professional motivation, professional incompetence, voluntary alteration of the quality of the teaching/learning-evaluation process, etc. Teachers, although they are seen as passive agents of the education system, have the most important role in the formal education of pupils, being the ones with whom preschoolers/students/interact directly and constantly;
• At the level of the object of action—in respect of the student: medical problems, learning disabilities, different learning rhythms, attention disorders during school hours, learning undesirable behaviors, allocating insufficient time to learning, non-compliance with rules, desire for affirmation, imminence of exams, etc.;
• At the level of the situation to be achieved—in respect of the educational process: the inadequacy of the volume of information in respect to the age and psycho-individual characteristics of students, the large number of students in study formations, the lack of teaching means/infrastructure in schools, the lack of monitoring and quality control systems of the didactic act, etc.;
• At the level of the social environment—in respect of the student’s family: social mobility of the family, parental strategies to support the student, the need to make investments in tutoring as a model of meritocratic promotion in society, etc.; and at the level of society: perpetuation of a socio-cultural model, development of competition between students, etc.

At the same time, the aforementioned dysfunctions, and many others, can be the premises/causes of the emergence of non-formal education as a form of education. This is represented by all educational actions, intentionally organized, systematic, carried out within the institutionalized framework, but outside the education system, which do not have explicit education as the aim. In this form of education, namely non-formal education, students’ tutoring activities by teachers can also be integrated [18].

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Instruments

The research was carried out between March and April 2022, online through a questionnaire with 18 closed-ended and open-ended questions, aimed at identifying the beneficiaries’ perception regarding the tutoring services/activities in which they participated.

Students’ tutoring activities by teachers, are the subject of multiple debates in the public space. On the one hand, there are debates by public authorities in the fields of Education, Justice, and Finance, and, on the other hand, there are debates by experts in the fields of Psychology, Educational Sciences, Sociology, Social Work, and Law. These debates were the starting point in the elaboration and application of questionnaire items that formed the basis of the research and targeted the following aspects:

• Efficiency of participating in tutoring activities from the perspective of the beneficiaries of these services;
• Need to participate in tutoring activities from the perspective of the beneficiaries of these services;
• Identifying the degree of satisfaction of those who participated in tutoring activities;
• Identifying the hierarchy of motivational factors that determined participation in tutoring activities;
• Identifying the level of student participation in tutoring activities during the pandemic period;
• Beneficiaries’ perception of social inequity among students, as a result of participating in tutoring activities;
• Beneficiaries’ perception of the degree of occupation of free time, as a result of participating in tutoring activities;
• Identifying how to organize and conduct tutoring activities.

2.2. Sample Description

Tutoring activities are attended by students who come from families with at least an average socio-economic status, and who are mainly interested in pursuing university studies, and in obtaining some performance enhancement and in-depth knowledge. Taking this into account, the respondents were selected, primarily from students in their 1st and 2nd year of the 1st cycle of undergraduate university studies, aged 19–22 years. Additionally, only 13.62% of the students were in their 2nd cycle of studies for a master’s degree—aged 22–24 years. This information can be seen in Figure 1.

At the same time, taking into account the extent of the tutoring phenomenon of students in Romania, we considered it interesting to identify, if, and to what extent, those who acquired the status of student in a prestigious higher education institution previously benefited from tutoring services.

Through a closed-ended question with the possibility of answering affirmatively/negatively, we identified the fact that 95.74% of the 235 student respondents participated in tutoring activities during their secondary education studies (secondary education/high school). This indicates a major interest in this type of activity from those pupils who want to acquire the status of student. In addition, the high percentage draws attention to the expansion of this social phenomenon.

Thus, the research was carried out on 235 students at the University Politehnica of Bucharest, an accredited higher-education institution, that is part of the Romanian national education system. This university has 16 faculties in its departmental structure, running 111 university study programs at bachelor’s degree level, with a duration of 4 years of study/180 ECTS, and 190 master’s university study programs with a duration of 2 years of study/120 ECTS. The fields of study are Engineering, Natural Sciences, Management and Educational Sciences. Doctoral university study programs cover 23 fields, organized in 14 faculties and many other postgraduate programs [19,20,21].

A total of 235 students responded to the questionnaire regarding tutoring activities. These were enrolled in the following administrative departments of the university: Faculty of Energy, (FE) Faculty of Entrepreneurship, Engineering and Business Management (FEEBM), Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technology (FETIT), Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Robotics (FIER), Faculty of Automation and Computers (FAC), Faculty of Engineering in Foreign Languages (FEFL), Faculty of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering (FMME), Faculty of Transport (FT), Faculty of Applied Sciences (FAS), Faculty of Aerospace Engineering (FAE), Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnologies (FCEB), Faculty of Biotechnical Systems Engineering (FBSE), Faculty of Electrical Engineering (FEE), Faculty of Medical Engineering (FME), Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering (FMSE).

According to gender variables, the sample participating in the research had the following structure: Male 57.45% and Female 42.55% (Figure 2).

3. Results

For the question, “To what extent do you consider the tutoring activities for students effective?”, on a value scale 0–5 of the Likert type, 85.96% of the respondents rated this type of activity as very effective and effective, 12.77% of the respondents rated it of average effectiveness, and only 1.27% of the respondents considered it of low effectiveness and inefficient (Figure 3).

The overwhelming assessment of tutoring activities as very effective and effective denotes the positive effects that they induce. Thus, according to [22] the students, participating in tutoring activities is promoted in learning environments, which, from a psychological point of view, induces satisfaction, in terms of competence (described as the state in which a person knows how to effectively achieve certain results) and autonomy (responsibility for initiating and regulating one’s own actions). Therefore, starting from this psychological approach, the positive effects are identified through the achievement of goals associated with improving school results, with students feeling more competent and confident.

The good and very good degree of efficiency, as rated by the respondents, clearly denotes the potential of tutoring to support the needs of the students. Their academic interest is closely related to intrinsic motivation, which, according to the self-determination theory, is influenced and determined by the fulfillment of psychological needs.

At the same time, the respondents of the questionnaire participating in tutoring activities during school assessed, in a proportion of 83.41%, that they were very satisfied and satisfied; 9.79% were moderately satisfied; and only 5.53% had a low level of satisfaction, in respect to the activities of tutoring in which they participated, as can be seen in Figure 4, opinions supported by the positive effects induced by these activities.

Moreover, the high degree of efficiency and satisfaction of the tutoring activities is reflected in the willingness of the responding students to recommend other students to participate in such activities. Thus, through a question with affirmative/negative answer options, we identified that 87.23% of responding students would recommend other students to participate in tutoring activities, and only 12.77% would not make such a recommendation.

For the question, “To what extent do you consider tutoring activities necessary for students?”, on a value scale 0–5 of the Likert type, 57.88% of the respondents rated them as very necessary and necessary activities, 35.32% of the respondents rated this type of activity as having an average necessity, and only 6.81% of the respondents found a low necessity and futility in these activities (Figure 5).

Additionally, the respondents had the opportunity to express their opinion, on a Likert-type scale, regarding the extent/expansion of tutoring activities among students, during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, taking place in Romania in the period 2020–2022, compared to the previous period. The respondents’ appreciations were rated as follows: 76.6% of them considered that the phenomenon of tutoring has seen a very large and large increase during the aforementioned period, 15.32% considered that the tutoring phenomenon has experienced a medium-level increase, and only 8.09% considered that this type of activity has not experienced an expansion. It is noted that, in the context of an atypical situation of health and educational crisis, students needed support and consequently, the most popular non-formal education services, respectively tutoring, were in great demand as an alternative means of acquiring missing knowledge.

In order to analyze the factors underlying the organization of tutoring activities, an analysis was made from the perspective of each actor who intervenes in this sociological phenomenon: parents, students, tutors. Although parents and pupils play different roles, they constitute a unitary whole in terms of factors, since, on the one hand, the financial source generally comes from the parents’ income and, on the other hand, at ages corresponding to primary education (6–10 years) and lower secondary/secondary education (10–14 years), children do not have a very well-defined intrinsic motivation for learning/acquiring knowledge. During upper secondary/high school education (14/15–18/19 years), especially in the final years of study, when students shape their own future, having an aspirational level, the decisive arguments come from them. In a succinct formulation, social actors (parents), who are interested in trying to maximize the usefulness of investing in the education of their children, will generate, in certain microstructural contexts, practices called tutoring.

Regarding the assessment of the factors that determine students’ attendance in tutoring activities, the responding students provided the answers reflected in the

Table 1. Respondents’ assessments regarding the factors that determine students’ attendance in tutoring activities.

Factor	Very Large Extent	Large Extent	Medium	Small	Not at All
Graduation of disciplines	12.34%	34.89%	34.89%	13.62%	4.26%
Passing exams (high school admission, baccalaureate, university admission)	58.30%	32.77%	5.96%	1.70%	1.28%
Preparation for participation in Olympiads/school competitions	24.68%	26.81%	27.66%	15.74%	5.11%
Social mobility of the pupil/their family	5.11%	16.17%	39.15%	26.81%	12.77%
Increased performance of individual or small group training	15.32%	21.70%	36.17%	19.57%	7.23%
Large volume of information relative to limited time in class	20.43%	33.62%	29.79%	12.77%	3.40%
Parents’ intervention methods in the formation of their own children	17.87%	29.36%	32.34%	15.74%	4.68%

:

In this context, the main factor standing out is passing exams (high school admission, baccalaureate, university admission), being rated by 91.07% of respondents as “to a very large extent”, or “to a large extent”. Through these answers provided by respondents, is highlighted one of the mechanisms underlying the emergence of the phenomenon of tutoring, which creates a parallelism to the education system, namely, competitiveness and obtaining a meritocratic place in the next education cycle (high school/university). Thus, as long as, in the Romanian education system, the allocation of places at the level of high school/university education is made according to the results (grades 0–10) obtained in exams by students/candidates, we will have a competitive system. And, because parents want to increase the educational or social chances of their children, they will constantly act on the child’s merit indicators. Tutoring activities therefore become one of the parental management strategies.

Moreover, the arguments highlighted above are illustrated exemplarily by the distribution of responses regarding the period in which the responding students benefited from tutoring: 84.26% of them in upper-secondary education/high school level (grades IX–XII), 11.91% in lower-secondary education/gymnasium level (grades V–VIII); 3.83% of them did not benefit from tutoring.

Regarding the social inequality between students generated by participating in tutoring activities, 36.6% of respondents assessed that it is perceived at a medium level, 43.4% of respondents assessed that it is perceived to a large and very large extent, while 20% of respondents assessed that it is perceived to a small extent or not at all. The fact that 80% of the responding students reported the existence of the phenomenon of social inequality between students participating/not participating in tutoring activities should draw the attention of specialists in the fields of Psychology, Education Sciences and Sociology to the existence of some the negative effects of tutoring activities. On the one hand, for families with good socio-economic status, participation in tutoring activities could give children the illusion of a necessary and sufficient condition to achieve goals, without the need for additional effort, eventually leading to psychological disappointment. On the other hand, for children from families located at the opposite pole, the fact that they do not have the financial resources for tutoring could determine in the first stage their marginalization/social exclusion, which could culminate in a decrease in self-esteem and in interest in learning, giving them a feeling of failure as a result of not benefiting from tutoring.

The analysis of other items from the questionnaire used as a tool in our research gives us relevant information on how to organize and carry out tutoring activities. Thus, we find out that 88.94% of respondents participated in tutoring activities organized physically, in formations of 1–5 students (Figure 6), and 83.83% of respondents said that this type of activity took place in a private space at the home of the tutor; only 3.40% of the respondents participated in tutoring activities carried out in school spaces.

From the results illustrated in Figure 6 and Figure 7, we can see that tutoring activities are also more effective than formal education activities due to the way they are organized and carried out: mainly through physical relationships, such as “face to face” between tutor and student; in the home of the tutor, which can give the student a sense of openness and trust, as well as creating a state of relaxation for the tutor, being in his own space; and grouped in small formations of 1–5 students, increasing the ability to concentrate the attention of the students and also the tutor/teacher.

As a result of the need to ensure the continuity of the instructive-educational process in the context of the global health crisis, unprecedented as the pandemic period caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, in 2020–2022 in Romania teaching activities were carried out exclusively online. Thus, we are witnessing a paradigmatic shift, in which education becomes one of the fields favored by the current state of technology. Teaching, learning and emerging technology can no longer be considered disparate, but outlines, holistically, of the future of digital education [23]. With all these major changes, for tutoring activities, face-to-face relationships between tutor and student are preferred, due to the fact that it facilitates direct communication between the two [24].

Regarding the extent to which the personal schedule/free time of the beneficiaries of the tutoring activities was affected, the responding students rated it as follows: to an average extent, 32.77%; to a very large and large extent, 37.87%; to a small extent and not at all, 24.68%. The analysis of the answers to this question draws attention to the fact that students can suffer, biopsychosocially, if there is no balance between the number of hours allocated to study, recreational activities and rest. Using an individual frame of reference, without using the results of other colleagues as comparative, could reduce the pressure caused by the social impact of hiring a tutor because it focuses on individual student progress.

Another dimension targeted by the research was to identify the level of availability of responding students to offer tutoring to Romanian and Ukrainian students who are refugees in Romania due to Russian armed attacks in 2022. The answers are more nuanced and can be identified in Figure 8, as follows: 29.79% have a medium level availability for tutoring Romanian students and 31.06% have a medium level availability for tutoring Ukrainian refugee students.

4. Discussion

From the analysis of the research results, we can identify that the Romanian pre-university education system, in continuous reform, unpredictable, underfunded, built on a loaded curriculum, experiences strong competition from the phenomenon of student tutoring. These activities are supported by a multitude of political and socio-economic factors that are not the object of our research, but especially by the intrinsic motivations of students and their families, a fact evidenced by respondents’ appreciations of student tutoring activities as very effective, very necessary, recommendable to students and bringing a very high degree of satisfaction. Tutoring activities are perceived by participants only at a medium level as free-time-consuming activities, which once again reinforces their usefulness for defining their personality.

In such a context, Zhang et al. (the authors of the study “Effectiveness of private tutoring during secondary schooling in Germany: Do the duration of private tutoring and tutor qualification affect school achievement?”) recommend close monitoring of students and parents in order to observe and assess their progress [25].

From the analysis of the research results we also find that this type of activity is frequently organized in small formations of 1–5 students and takes place mainly physically in the tutors’ own spaces, which explains, on the one hand, the increased efficiency of the learning process for students, and on the other hand, justifies the transformation of the activity into a service provided by the tutor, as an additional activity of the tutor, beyond the norm of employment in the education system, which can be a powerful motivational source for the tutor. The results of our study are in agreement with the study carried out by Burch, Good and Heinrich in which they found “significant associations between formats, curriculum drivers, tutor locations, and other characteristics of digital providers and their effectiveness in increasing student achievement, as well as differential access by student characteristics” [26] (p. 84). This positive relationship, between the tutoring framework—considered by students to be one of reference—and school progress is also anticipated by the study [3].

Regarding the motivational level experienced by students when participating in tutoring activities, we find a diverse range of intrinsic reasons valuable for personal development: from passing exams/study subjects, achieving performances, to recovery/assimilation/deepening of knowledge and formation/development of competencies [27]. Tutoring is considered by 85.96% of the study participants to be effective and very effective not only for obtaining additional skills, for increasing their level of knowledge and assimilation, but also for psychological benefits, such as increasing self-esteem and increasing self-efficacy. The positive effects listed are also supported by other studies [16,28,29], but attention is drawn to a possible consequence, namely: reducing the quality of teaching, put under the sign of “learning one step ahead”. Approaching a topic in tutoring before it is discussed in class could lead to decreased motivation and involvement in formal teaching activities [6,30]. Furthermore, our findings underscore the importance of autonomy-supportive behavior from parents and teachers for the positive development of students’ motivation and emotions [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31].

At the same time, respondents assess that this type of educational activity brings only an average level of social inequality. This perception is justified by the magnitude of the manifestation of the phenomenon, both in terms of the number of students and teachers involved, as well as the time intervals in which the tutoring activities take place. Moreover, the respondents’ opinion is that, in the SARS-CoV2 pandemic, between 2020 and 2022 in Romania, the phenomenon of tutoring has experienced an exponential growth, being a response to the poor quality of formal education and to the adaptation of acquired knowledge to the needs of the market [29].

5. Conclusions

The Romanian state has come up with two measures for the 2021–2022 school years in order to mitigate the gaps between students, determined by social inequality:

• Educational voucher—financed from European funds, granted to all students coming from families whose monthly income does not exceed two net minimum wages. This voucher worth 200 RON/month aims to cover the costs of a minimum number of hours of additional training for those students.
• Extension of the “School after School” program—This is a complementary program to the compulsory school program, offering formal and non-formal learning opportunities, for the consolidation of competencies, remedial learning and learning acceleration.

We also note from the research that students at the University Politehnica of Bucharest were, in a significant percentage, beneficiaries of tutoring services during their high school studies. This reveals that, through additional/complementary training relative to the school curriculum, they have formed/developed intellectual and moral/ethical skills, and at the same time, we also note that a significant percentage of them want to offer tutoring to students.

One must consider the fact that the desire to know/to assimilate information exists in students; and even more, in some of them it is transformed into an objective of individual moral consciousness. Students become responsible for learning regardless of the context, with the aim of ensuring social success. Thus, tutoring, as recuperative/complementary educational activities, will continue under any form of social, legislative or economic pressure.

Taking into account the fact that tutoring activities have as their fundamental purpose the harmonious development of students, and that the phenomenon is so ample and present in our social reality, it potentially could be supported/organized/structured/integrated and not sanctioned by the social/fiscal/legal/educational policies of the state. Thus, both formal and non-formal education activities could be carried out in school spaces.

The integration of tutoring and other similar activities carried out by students in various forms of non-formal education for students, could constitute the premise for their option to choose a teaching profession. At the same time, coherent and motivating policies should be applied for the recruitment and selection of candidates for the teaching profession and their subsequent development in this career.