HKU Bulletin October 2012 (Vol. 14 No.1)

Teaching and Learning HKU is at the forefront of research on this topic, thanks largely to Professor Mark Bray, UNESCO Chair Professor in Comparative Education and Director of HKU’s Comparative Education Research Centre. His work on private tutoring − or shadow education as it is called, because it mimics the mainstream − began in the 1990s when UNICEF asked him to investigate household costs on education in nine Southeast Asian countries. He noticed that money spent on tutoring was very high, and in 1999 wrote the first international study on the subject. That study raised particular interest in Asia, but the reaction elsewhere was “interesting, but that’s over there”. Ten years on, shadow education was recognised much more widely. By then Professor Bray was in Paris, having taken four years unpaid leave from HKU to work as Director of UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP). A global phenomenon In 2009, while at IIEP, Professor Bray published a sequel, Confronting the Shadow Education System: What Government Policies for What some kind of shadow education. Numbers are almost as high in Hong Kong, where 72 per cent of senior secondary students are tutored. “And that’s across the board,” says Professor Bray. “People tend to assume we’re talking about local schools, but our research shows there’s just as much tutoring for students in international schools.” The same goes for relatively low-income countries – in India’s West Bengal state, 64 per cent of primary school children are tutored; and Sri Lanka 92 per cent of Grade 10 students receive tutoring. The phenomenon of ‘star tutors’ is especially obvious in Hong Kong. These are stylish- looking teachers whose faces are featured in ads on buses and in newspapers. They attract huge numbers of Hong Kong teenagers to attend tutorial schools, often claiming to guarantee that the teenagers will get ‘A’s in exams. But as Bray’s research shows, many students chiefly go simply because their peers do. He believes that Mainland China is ripe for a similar trend. “China has rising incomes, single- child families, increasing labour mobility, and growing competition for university places. Tutoring centres will play on all these factors to attract pupils.” The challenges The main problems lie in the quality of tutoring in this largely unregulated sector; the advantages it can give children from wealthy families while those from low-income families fall behind; the inequalities it can create in the classroom for teachers who are trying to serve students with different knowledge levels; and of course the question of whether children are being over-tutored and not given time to play, do sports and develop social skills. “Some school teachers are offended by the notion of shadow education,” says Bray, “while others offer to do the extra tutoring themselves for a fee − which raises ethical questions.” Professor Bray has a football stadium analogy for shadow education. “If everyone in the stadium is sitting down, then everyone can see the game. But if the front row stands up, then the people behind them have to stand up. Soon almost everyone is standing up – and those who do not are severely disadvantaged.” Yet it is not that tutoring in itself is a bad thing, especially when used to help a child having difficulties keeping up with a particular subject in class. “We can pontificate on a macro level that it’s problematic, but on an individual level it can be a good thing,” laughs Bray, readily admitting that some of his own family members have received tutoring in some subjects, and that it helped. Spreading the word Professor Bray’s agenda is to focus more attention on the subject and on its implications for mainstream education. At the time of this interview, he was about to fly to Mauritius for the triennial meeting of Commonwealth Ministers of Education. “I’m reporting on the Education for All agenda, which was part of the Millennium Development Goals,” he says. “It harks back to the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights which called for free and compulsory education for all. In many countries education is officially free of charge, but parents still have to pay for tutoring. Does this mean that free education is failing?” He would like to see more focus on the backwash effects of shadow education on mainstream. “For example current reforms in Hong Kong’s education system say nothing about shadow education, despite its obvious spread and role.” “We also need guidelines for parents. It is a competitive world, and it’s natural to want your children to get ahead. But parents should receive guidance about excessive and/or inappropriate tutoring.” The subject is getting all the attention it deserves at the Faculty of Education, where it is a Faculty Research Theme. Professor Bray’s team recently won funding from the Research Grants Council to examine the relationship between mainstream schooling and private tutoring in local secondary schools. More dramatically perhaps, one team member is investigating tutoring at kindergarten level in Hong Kong. Other team members are focusing on Bangladesh, Cambodia, Georgia, and Mainland China. Hong Kong educators may feel ambivalent about the scale of tutoring, but focus on the theme can be part of the solution. Through the work of Professor Bray and his team, HKU is taking the lead in both local and international research on topic which increasingly touches the lives of students and their families around the globe. M Private Tutoring? . It tasked governments everywhere to assess and perhaps regulate this growing business. The book has been translated into 15 languages – Arabic, Armenian, Azeri, Bangla, Chinese, French, Georgian, Hindi, Korean, Mongolian, Nepali, Polish, Spanish, Sinhala and Urdu. The number of languages is a measure of the spread of countries where extra tutoring has become an issue. In 2011, the European Commission asked Professor Bray to prepare a regional study. His report was entitled The Challenge of Shadow Education: Private Tutoring and its Implications for Policy Makers in Europe . The extent of the phenomenon there raised many eyebrows and attracted much press attention. It has been followed by a 2012 report for the Asian Development Bank. This work has brought extraordinary recognition for HKU and for its comparative education studies. The bestowing of the UNESCO Chair in Comparative Education in May this year is part of that recognition. It is also a prime example of knowledge exchange between the research, government and policy-making worlds. Large numbers What is behind all the excitement? It is a subject that just keeps expanding, not only as shadow education spreads to more countries, but also as it becomes more widely accepted. The implications and the question marks are growing in equal measure. Extra tutoring has become a fact of life for huge numbers of children across the globe. South Korea leads the way with nearly 90 per cent of elementary school children receiving Standing in the Shadows Is mainstream education failing? That’s one of the big questions raised by the explosion of private tutoring for school-age children − a phenomenon that is spreading across the world. ! " # $ $ % & $ $ ' % # ( ) % # % * + $ , % & - % # . % & " % / , ( 0 % * + $ , % % 1 2 * 3 4 5 % + 3 ) % 5 6 # + & $ % 6 % % + % 7 - ! 8 , ! $ % % , % , % % # ! + + $ , % & ! , ! ! % # ! % $ $ & % + % ' 6 7 Current reforms in Hong Kong’s education system say nothing about shadow education, despite its obvious spread and role. 9 : ; < = > > ; : ? @ : A B : @ C 27 October 2012 The University of Hong Kong Bulletin