As pupils face ever-growing pressure to improve grades, courses offered by private agencies seem like an easy solution but the cost in both time and money is high, Zhao Xinying reports.

Wang Haifeng is pondering whether to register her son, a fifth-grade Beijing primary school pupil, on a math tutorial course. If she does, it would be the fifth course the Beijing resident has signed her 10-year-old child up for.

The other four are English, Chinese classics, basketball and the game of Go. Her son has to attend each class once or twice every week.

"The number is not that large compared with many of my son's classmates at school, who have seven, eight or even more tutorial courses of different subjects to take outside school."

The popularity of these seemingly "hot services" is accentuated by the scarcity of places offered by some tutorial agencies.

In November 2016, a report by Metro Express, a newspaper in Zhejiang province about parents waiting outside classrooms of a well-known tutorial agency to obtain a place for their children went viral on WeChat Friend Circle. It triggered heated discussions and retrospection among parents and educators on whether the pursuit of such services is rational or not.

The report said many parents signed their children up for tutorial courses not only to improve the children's test results over a short period of time, but also with a longer-term view: to get the children prepared for the fierce competition of entrance exams for highly selective junior middle or high schools.

According to educational laws and regulations, pupils in China do not have to take any tests when they finish their primary school studies and rise to junior middle school.

But the principle only applies to students who choose to enter ordinary junior middle schools that are adjacent to the addresses on their hukou, or permanent residence permit.

For those who want to attend prestigious junior middle schools with better facilities and teachers, they have to pass independent recruiting exams, which are organized by the schools and consisting of tests of subjects taught in primary school, including math and English.

Under such circumstances, turning to tutorial agencies that help students improve test scores is almost a must to possibly increase the odds of being admitted.

Heavy workload

The tutorial courses Wang registered for her son are held on weekday evenings or over the weekend, with each lasting two to four hours. This means her son spends almost 20 hours a week on tutoring outside school. This doesn't include time spent on commuting.

"It's not relaxing, either for me or my son," Wang said.

"Reducing student workload" has been advocated in China for many years. Recent measures to ensure this were issued by the education authorities and included 10 regulations released by the Ministry of Education that came into effect in 2013.

According to the regulations, primary schoolteachers cannot assign homework to pupils; they are also not allowed to give any type of tutoring after school; in addition, tests are banned among students from the first to the third grade. Students from fourth to sixth grade can only have only unified exams organized by the school once a semester and only three subjects - Chinese, math and English - can be tested.

These well-intended efforts seemed ineffective in making students feel relaxed, particularly after school. The time saved originally for entertainment and physical exercise is again consumed by tutoring on subjects that will be tested if children want to be accepted by the best junior middle schools, as well as ones that could be potentially developed into hobbies and strengths, such as music, fine arts and so on.

Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, an education think tank, said the workload-reducing policies ended up increasing the burden caused by the unbalanced distribution of high-quality public educational resources and the long-dominant, unchanged test-oriented education system in China.

"Against such a backdrop, anxious parents have no choice but to send children to after-school tutorial agencies if they want the children to score high and access the best education," he said.

Generous investment

Yu Guoming, executive director of Beijing Normal University's School of Journalism and Communication, sees the phenomenon from a perspective different from that of Xiong.

"The booming popularity of tutoring is a result of the expanding middle class in China, who believe in the power of good education in changing a person's life and are therefore eager to offer an education of high quality to their offspring," Yu said.

The Global Wealth Report 2015 released by Credit Suisse Research Institute showed that with 109 million adults, or 8 percent of the population counted as middle class, China outnumbered the United States for the first time, and this has led to changing consumption patterns.

"Education, together with housing, healthcare and travel, is on the consumption list of the Chinese middle class," Yu said. "Treating education as one of the very few channels to rise to the higher social classes, the Chinese middle class will spare no efforts in investing in their children's education."

Beijing resident Ji Qing's experience is typical. The 45-year-old has an 8-year-old daughter. To "fully exploit her talent", Ji has registered her on numerous tutorial courses - piano, dancing, singing, Peking opera, Go, Chinese classics, calligraphy, Chinese painting, English - almost any subject a child of her age is capable of learning. This started when she was just three.

The cost during the past five years has been quite high, as tuition for each subject is at least 10,000 yuan ($1,500), not to mention that the mother has also had to squeeze every minute of her time off work to send the girl to, and pick her up from, the courses.

"I have only one child and want her to lead a successful life after she grows up, so such investment and guidance is necessary" said Ji, who has quit her job as a sales manager of a company in Beijing so that she could focus on the education of her daughter. "Seeing her win awards, progress, makes me feel that what I have done is worthwhile."

More retrospection

Ora Kwo, a professor of education at the University of Hong Kong, has researched private tutoring for years.

She said Chinese people's passion for private tutoring is not isolated. Other Asian countries, particularly South Korea, have also witnessed the phenomenon. It's also quite established in South Asian countries and has gained increasing popularity in Europe, the Americas and Africa. She added that families with high incomes able to provide children with private tuition are setting the trend, making parents of middle-and-low incomes feel they have to do the same.

"Private tutoring has profound influences on the equity of education at public schools, which should arouse people's attention," Kwo said.

She said this requires an in-depth look at the situation to cover many areas, including the balance between private tutoring and teaching at public schools, the quality of public schools, approaches to learning and teaching as well as the attitude of students.

Contact the writer at zhaoxinying@chinadaily.com.cn

Students practice calligraphy in Wuzhi county, Henan province. The course is part of a free-tuition program run by the local government.Feng Xiaomin / Xinhua