Chinese parents are buzzing these days.
On 'Weibo', the Chinese version of Twitter, comments are coming up saying, "Is tutoring really banned during vacation?"
Reuters reported on the 16th, citing several sources, that a policy to ban online and offline tutoring during vacations and weekends in nine provinces including Beijing, Shanghai and Jiangsu Province will be announced soon.
According to Reuters, the policy is aimed at protecting students from stress and reducing the burden on parents of education, leading to higher fertility rates.
Prohibition of children's prior learning... Establishment of private education supervisory body
Shares of Chinese education-related companies fell after the report.
The Chinese government has not commented on the Reuters report.
There are also opinions about whether the ban is really going to happen as there is a lot of demand for tutoring during vacations and the burden of childcare for dual-income couples is high.
However, last year, a 'negative list' of prohibiting excessive prior learning during vacation was announced, and considering the recent measures taken by the Chinese government, it is not that the policy is unlikely to be implemented.
China's education authorities have banned the teaching of elementary school curriculum to children aged 3 to 8 in kindergartens and hagwons since the 1st of last month.
In addition, 15 private tutoring companies that made false or exaggerated advertisements or demanded too much money in relation to the effectiveness of education or the quality of instructors were recently caught and fined 36.5 million yuan or about 6.4 billion won.
In particular, on the 15th, the Ministry of Education of China established an organization called 'Suburban Education and Training Supervisor and Manager'
This organization oversees the education outside the school, that is, the private education market. It is in charge of licensing and permitting the establishment of online and offline private education institutions, preparing and executing relevant standards and systems, and inspecting the content and time, instructor quality, and cost.
Chinese media defended the establishment of a separate supervisory department, saying, "In the meantime, many problems have arisen as private education companies have sprung up, which has caused a serious economic burden and disrupted the educational order."
Xi Jinping: "Resolve the problem of private education sprawl
Since ancient times, China has been very interested in education under the influence of Confucianism and so on, to the extent that there is a saying 'Maengmo three thousand jigyo'. In particular, the education competition to send their one and only child to a good university has intensified under the influence of the 'one household, one child' policy that has been in place for decades. As economic power grew, the private education market expanded rapidly.
According to Chinese media such as Groom Wang, there are 490,000 registered private education companies in China, and 49,000 new ones were created between January and May of this year. TAL Group, a Chinese online education company, estimates that the size of China's private education market for kindergarteners to middle and high school students will reach 730 billion yuan this year, an increase of more than 80% from last year's 400 billion yuan. The rapid growth of the private education market is leading to an increase in education expenses. According to Reuters, the cost of raising a child in an average family in China soared from 490,000 yuan in 2005 to nearly 2 million yuan, or about 350 million won, last year, according to Reuters. This is leading to family economic burden and polarization in education. In particular, the huge cost of education, along with house prices, is a major factor that makes young people reluctant to marry and have children.
As the situation worsened, Chinese President Xi Jinping directly addressed the issue of private educational institutions in the middle of China, along with the educational disparity in central and western China, at two meetings in March. And during a visit to Qinghai Province on the 7th, he pointed out, "The teacher in the school is responsible for the basic learning of students. If you do it at a hagwon outside the school instead of inside the school, this is the truth." "He said.
Many Chinese parents are asking, "Do you have no choice but to study at home or move to a prestigious school district?" In a competitive environment for college entrance exams, reducing a child's learning volume is intimidating. In this regard, the Chinese education authorities announced a policy to limit the amount of homework at school earlier this year, and in some regions, they are renovating the school district system by evenly allocating a portion of the admission quota for prestigious high schools to each middle school. Given the strong will of the Chinese government, the private education market is expected to shrink considerably. However, it is not yet known whether it will lead to the achievement of suppressing the fervor of 'blind mothers' for education and raising the fertility rate as the government wishes.