Gig economy and educational inequality: a socio-legal analysis of the UK online tutoring industry

Abstract

This article sheds light on an under-regulated and under-studied sector at the intersection of the gig economy and the United Kingdom (UK) education system – the online tutoring industry. Like other gig economy workers, online tutors suffer from low pay, inadequate training, and unsustainable working hours. However, this article shows that online tutors’ poor working environment translates directly into poor education received by pupils. Thus, left unregulated, online tutoring platforms transfer inequality in access to private tuition to inequality in the quality and safety of education. Since online tutors are predominantly university students whose own academic progress is compromised by financial precarity and overwork, such exploitation has a compound impact on social mobility. Subsequently, the article calls for Ofsted intervention to protect workers’ rights and ease educational inequality. The article thus makes three interconnected contributions: extending gig economy scholarship to wider socially significant sectors beyond Uber and Deliveroo; developing a socio-legal account of how alliance between workers and external stakeholders can address structural power imbalances where common law remedies are ineffective; providing the first sustained legal analysis of the UK online tutoring industry as part of the shadow education sector.