Students pay heavy price for private training
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Chinese VIEWS
Last Sunday, my 12-year-old son was invited to a birthday party for a girl in his class. On that beautiful sunny afternoon, I was a little moved by the sight of my son and his classmates rollicking and shouting as the party got underway.
Before long, they would be too big for such amusements. As a matter of fact, next month these children will all graduate from primary school — which, in China, ends at grade five. After that, would they ever meet again?
By now, most fifth-grade students in Shanghai already know which middle school they will attend.
While my son and his friends gamboled about, I took a stroll through the residential compound where the party was taking place. It was a huge complex with a central square and walking paths for residents.
I also saw a cluster of shops and storefronts which, upon closer scrutiny, turned out to be for private education companies. Wall Street English was represented there, as was a place offering musical testing services. There was even a monk sitting at the front desk of a martial arts training studio.
Such educational facilities, together with the omnipresent real estate brokerages and beauty parlors, dominate China’s urban landscape. These companies are among the few which are truly prospering these days. Indeed, we need only look at the transition from primary to middle school to understand why they are thriving.
Stepping up to middle school is supposed to a non-competitive process, with admission ostensibly determined by a child’s hukou status and location of residence.
But as one informed parent revealed to me years ago, being admitted to a good school is extremely competitive. In such cases, a “good” school usually refers to a private school or a special program in a public school.
With middle-school entrance exams no longer administered out of concern for the already onerous study burden placed on students, admission decisions at coveted schools can nevertheless be influenced by certificates and training credentials racked up by youngsters at private training companies. Some companies even offer lessons to parents and children about how to handle themselves during interviews with middle-school admissions officers.
A girl from my son’s class who had just been accepted by one top school had been attending private training sessions since kindergarten. This news prompted one hearer to note that her family could have spent hundreds of thousands of yuan on such lessons over the past several years.
Not surprisingly, exceptions are made for students whose parents can leverage powerful guanxi (connections). One school master, while reflecting on the rigors of the enrollment process, openly acknowledged that exceptions have to be made for tiaozisheng: students from families having strong connections.
But guanxi also matters in unlikely places. Several years ago, a friend of mine got his son into an expensive training program with one well-known private company. The program was so sought-after that he had to leverage his connections in high places just to have the privilege of enrolling his child in the program.
Good connections
Last month, he leveraged his guanxi again to get his son an interview with a good school. Normally, the school in question only accepts candidates identified as “three good” students at the district or municipal level. Lacking such distinctions, the son was nonetheless accepted. The father also revealed to me that there is a black market for interviews at this particular institution, with the price of a single meeting running into the tens of thousands of yuan.
And it is upon this demand that so many fortunes are being made in the private training industry. Some particularly successful businesses have even listed on overseas stock exchanges, where they are valued at hundreds of millions (if not billions) of US dollars.
Unfortunately, the profitability of such companies gets more attention than the misery of our children.
The aforementioned father said one girl in his son’s class had attended so many training sessions on weekends that she looked forward to Mondays, when the start of a new school week would mean fewer training sessions.
Does graduation from middle school offer any relief? Hardly. On their websites many companies boast a full range of courses designed for preschoolers all the way to high-schoolers.
Of the five children invited to last weekend’s birthday party, one arrived late and one left early, both having training sessions to attend.
As I overheard one frustrated mother exclaim years ago: “I am totally supportive of restoring the practice of administering open junior middle school entrance tests.”
I’m afraid that many people like her are looking back into the past not because it was a wonderful time for childhood education, but because what we are seeing now in the present is even more horrifying.
In the name of saving our kids from the pressures of another high-pressure test, we are allowing our education to be dictated by money. As things stand now, children from wealthy and well-connected families are being siphoned off into “good” classes and private schools, effectively creating a caste system.
The fabulous wealth made from such circumstances will only continue to favor the rich. Educational authorities should not collude in this process. It is high time we all take another look at the meaning and purpose of education.
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