Over the past few weeks, we spoke with fifteen tuition teachers/centres across three Indian cities—Pune, Hyderabad and Bhubaneshwar—curious about what actually happens in these spaces for children aged 3 to 8. On the surface, these spaces present themselves as academic supplements—places where children come to learn alphabets, phonics, numbers, and motor skills. But the real work happening inside is far deeper, softer, and harder to name.
When asked what keeps their centres going, not one teacher began with the curriculum. They spoke instead of time. Of rhythm. Of showing up every day at 4 PM so a parent can work a shift, run errands, or simply breathe.
“It’s not about what I’m teaching,” one teacher in Pune told us. “It’s about the fact that the child is safe here, happy here—and that the parent can count on that.”
And that, it turns out, is the real currency of these tuition spaces: trust.
A System that Pretends to Be About Learning
To keep up appearances, these spaces speak the language of learning—syllabus, outcomes, school readiness. But both teachers and parents quietly acknowledge that this is often a cover for something far more essential: childcare.
In many cities where formal daycare is unaffordable, inconsistent, or simply unavailable, tuition becomes the more culturally acceptable stand-in. It’s learning with plausible deniability. No one has to say: “I need help.” Everyone can say: “I’m sending him for tuition.”
But inside, what’s really happening is snack time, nap time, a scraped knee being attended to, a tantrum soothed, a story shared. This is not a failure of the system. This is the system. Just one we refuse to name as care.
Between the Cracks, a Network of Everyday Holding
These teachers are often women—working from their homes, sometimes with their own children in tow. Most have no formal training in early childhood care. What they offer is presence. Attentiveness. A form of caregiving that is improvised, relational, and responsive.
A teacher in Hyderabad shared how her classes often extend beyond their scheduled time. “If a parent is late, the child stays. I give them dinner sometimes. They play with my kids. I don’t charge extra. What else can I do?”
In these moments, tuition becomes less about instruction and more about integration—a child temporarily folded into another household, another rhythm, another adult’s care.
These moments of improvised care aren’t exceptions—they’re part of an unspoken rhythm that plays out daily in these rooms.
You notice it in the smallest things.
A child arrives crying and is met not with discipline, but with a warm roti rolled in jaggery, quietly offered without fuss. Another one refuses to speak for weeks—and is simply allowed to sit, no pressure to perform. Teachers remember who likes their water cold, who refuses to be touched when upset, who needs to nap at 5 PM or they’ll unravel by 6. One teacher showed me a cupboard of extra clothes, for children who wet themselves mid-session but don’t want their parents to find out. Another keeps small pouches of haldi and camphor—”for when they say their tummy hurts, but I know it’s just too much today.” These gestures aren’t part of a plan. They emerge from observation, from repetition, from care that isn’t trained but lived. What’s being offered isn’t a service—it’s a kind of soft noticing that sits just beneath the surface of routine.
If it’s Not Just Tuition, What is It?
It’s scaffolding. It’s safety. It’s a stand-in for the village that no longer exists.
If we stopped insisting on calling it tuition, maybe we could start building the infrastructure that these spaces—and the families who depend on them—actually deserve. Maybe we could train caregivers without pretending they’re teachers. Maybe we could fund small, local care hubs without wrapping them in the language of school readiness and academic outcomes.
Because what’s happening here isn’t remedial education. It’s responsive care.
It isn’t curriculum. It’s consistency.
It isn’t school. It’s support.
So why do we keep dressing it up? Why must care only be validated when it wears the uniform of learning?
Maybe it’s time to stop studentifying everything children touch. Especially when it’s children who are just three, four, five years old.
Maybe it’s time to call this what it is: a care system.
One that already exists. One that quietly works. One that deserves to be seen.
Because beyond the blackboard, what’s being offered isn’t just education—it’s the holding up of families, routines, and childhoods.
And that, too, is infrastructure. Essential, everyday, and long overdue for recognition.
