Law to Criminalize Private Tutoring
Call to legislate a law criminalizing private tutoring and monitoring transfers to foreign teachers to prevent money laundering and improve education quality.
Translated by Qiyas from السياسة — Original source
Our Opinion
With the start of the academic year, many foreign teachers become active in taking on a secondary job: tutoring students in private lessons immediately after their official working hours, often extending late into the night, due to the large number of clients among academically struggling students.
This phenomenon has several causes. First, most teachers do not fully fulfill their educational duties during official working hours, either because of a lack of dedication, treating teaching merely as a job with fixed hours, or because their primary work begins only after their official shift ends. In this secondary role, they earn significantly more money—often many times their government salary. Additionally, there is a lack of oversight by educational supervisors and school principals regarding teachers’ performance and students’ academic progress.
In the absence of government supervision by the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Interior over these private tutors, whose numbers increase annually due to the substantial profits they generate, these funds are transferred to their home countries through unofficial financial intermediaries, both within and outside Kuwait. This constitutes money laundering and tax evasion through the avoidance of official currency conversion channels.
The result is a decline in students’ academic standards. Some even reach university or specialized institutes without mastering basic reading and writing skills. This has produced an ignorant generation that seeks degrees by any means necessary, primarily through financial means. Consequently, the country has turned into a marketplace for selling study guides, leaking exam questions, and facilitating exam cheating for a price.
The solution lies in enacting legislation that criminalizes private tutoring and private tutors, considering their actions a crime that contributes to the failure and ignorance of an entire generation. It also involves penalizing teachers for dereliction of duty, as they receive salaries and hold educational positions while engaging in this secondary activity. Furthermore, parents should be encouraged to report private tutors via a hotline or a WhatsApp reporting line, with legal protection provided to whistleblowers once they are summoned for investigation.
Additionally, authorities should monitor the monthly fund transfers made by these teachers and arrest them, along with the intermediaries who facilitate the transfer of money abroad. The Ministry of Education should also issue a decision regulating private tutoring within schools, charging symbolic or reasonable fees. Otherwise, the cycle of educational decline and ignorance will continue.
A Kuwaiti lawyer and legal expert
