China Regulates Off-campus Tutoring To Ease Burden On Students

BEIJING, July 7 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Jul, 2021 ) :Unlike their usual tranquility during the summer vacation, Primary and middle schools in Beijing will be buzzing with excited students as the municipal government has required schools to provide daycare services during the holiday.

Doors to school libraries, reading rooms and playgrounds will be wide open, and school subject classes are not allowed to be organized, according to the city's education bureau.

In addition to Beijing, the cities of Shanghai, Wuhan and Suzhou have introduced similar daycare policies, which target the competitive tutoring market for school children during holidays so as to ease their pressure.

At a late May meeting, the central authority ordered the comprehensive management of off-campus training institutions and a tougher crackdown on unqualified operations, false advertising, profiteering, and improper connections with schools.

Taking advantage of parents' ambitions for their children, some training institutions take part in anxiety marketing, selling unnecessary programs that increase the burden on students and disrupt the laws of education.

"This has led to a series of social problems such as students' falling levels of physical fitness, increased psychological problems, heavy family financial burdens and decreased willingness to have children," said Chu Zhaohui, a senior researcher with the National Institute of Education Sciences.

According to the Ministry of Education, 400,000 off-campus training institutions were inspected from 2016 to 2020, focusing on problems such as unlicensed training, excessive training, illegal charges and false advertising.

In 2018, the Chinese government introduced the country's first document on the development of the off-campus tutoring industry at the national level.

On June 15 this year, the Ministry of Education announced the establishment of a special department for the supervision of after-school education and training for pre-school children, as well as primary and middle-school students.

"With the establishment of the department, regulatory measures concerning the qualifications, operations, courses and capital of after-school education and training institutions are expected to be unveiled in the near future," said education expert Xiong Bingqi.