Education in China: high costs, intense competition for schools, excessive tutoring, and fewer children
- The anxiety and high cost of educating a child in China means many parents are not considering having more children
- Despite efforts to equalise the distribution of resources between schools, parents continue to compete for what they think are the best options
A Chinese professor has become an overnight celebrity, not for academic achievement, but for sharing his feelings of helplessness about how to help his daughter perform academically.
Professor Zhang Xiaoqiang from Chongqing University in western China wrote a line in his introduction on the university’s official website which has since gone viral.
“Though I have tutored more than 70 postgraduate students, I still have totally no idea how to educate my middle-school daughter,” he wrote.
The remark has struck a chord with parents across China, where a growing middle class is anxiously pushing their children to perform academically to get a place at a good school.
Shanghai mother Wang Nan makes her seven-year-old boy attend five different courses after school each week, and said she knows it’s a lot of pressure for a child but fears he will lack competitiveness given all his peers are immersed in all kinds of off-campus learning activities.
She spends almost half her salary on after-school courses, and has given up plans to have a second child.