Teaching tutoring centres a lesson won’t get to the root of Chinese students’ stress

While President Xi Jinping is right to focus on the problems in the education sector, cram schools are only the tip of the iceberg

Reform of the gaokao system is key to ending the unhealthy over-reliance on after-school tutoring

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A Chinese high school student studies late at night for the annual college entrance examinations, in Handan, Hebei province, in May 2018. Photo: EPA-EFE

Alice Wu

Alice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA.

Published: 9:15am, 31 May 2021Updated: 9:15am, 31 May 2021

Beijing is cracking the whip on the mainland’s cutthroat tutoring market by introducing tighter regulations. At the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference meeting in March, President Xi Jinping described the country’s market for after-school training services as a “social problem”, noting that “the disorder among tutorial centres is an entrenched malady” and called for “all social aspects and related departments” to join hands to solve the problem.

It’s not news that the education sector – especially off-campus education that starts from kindergarten and runs all the way up to grade 12 – is ridiculously lucrative.

Yes, the off-campus education sector has taken a huge hit due to the Covid-19 pandemic because these centres have not been allowed to hold in-person classes for a long time. Last year, Yousheng Education Technology, a major tutorial chain with 1,200 teaching centres and a 20-year history, shut down and was unable to offer refunds to most parents.