The business of education in China
China is well known for the pressure students are subjected to. Education is a rat race in there and basically all children attend lots of after-school classes because they have to be the best or risk not being able to go to a good high school and later to a good university. Having a child that is a blue collar worker, even if they are highly skilled technicians, is a disgrace for middle and upper class Chinese parents, so many children don’t do anything apart from going to multiple classes and studying to try to get to a good university. I wrote about this several years ago in this post. Re-reading the comments, I see that I wrote that, if I had a child, I’d send them to study in Spain. Later on, I changed my mind and thought that the best was for him to attend at least some years of school in China, so he could learn to write Chinese. Now, with everything that has happened and our unexpected move to Spain, I don’t care about that anymore. If we end up going back to Suzhou, I don’t want my child to attend a public Chinese school, of that I’m sure.
Maybe you’ve heard that, a few years ago, the Chinese government decided that it was necessary to reduce the academic burden on children, so they banned extracurricular classes that were academic in nature (sports, arts and the like are still permitted). Many after-school companies went down the drain and lots of teachers lost their jobs. Now, a few years later, are Chinese children any more free? Hehe, that’s a good one. After-school classes were banned, but school curricula were not modified, and the university entrance exam is still the same, so in practice nothing has changed. Except that now families have to look for “underground” classes and pay more money for them. If the policy objective was eliminating the advantages that wealthy and urban families, with more money and resources, have over poor and rural families, the result has been the exact opposite. Rich kids are still attending after-school classes, and for poor kids it’s more difficult than before.
When we were still in Suzhou, A. was very young, so he didn’t attend any class. That doesn’t mean there are no classes for babies. It’s China, of course there are! I even saw adverts for Baby CEO classes, whatever the crap that is (it sounds like a complete scam to me), and the gym, English and music classes for babies are ubiquitous. Their marketing people exploit parents’ anxieties and make them believe their children will “lose at the starting line” if they don’t attend baby classes, so they end up forking out 10,000 yuan for a yearly program. With some math, you realize that those classes cost over 200 RMB each (aprox. 30 EUR), which is frankly ridiculous as they are not 1 on 1 classes.
In Suzhou Center, the trendiest mall, there was a swimming gym for babies. Yes, one of those places where the baby wears a floatie on their neck and is put on a pool a bit bigger than a bath tub. Do you know how much each class was? 500 frigging yuan. Over 70 EUR!! Was the pool filled with Evian???
Close to where we lived, there was also a taekwondo school. Not long ago, I saw one of their adverts in WeChat: a package of 10 classes for 1500 yuan. Better than the pool, but still… that’s 215 EUR per month.
Let’s compare it with the prices of after-school classes in Spain. Since the beginning of this year, A. has been attending swimming lessons in the nicest gym in town. How much is the bill? 47.50 EUR per month, 2 classes per week, with a limit of 11 children per group. Also, his school (public school) is offering several after-school classes this year: skating, taekwondo, volleyball, basketball, creative design, chess and modern dance, twice a week. The price? 20 EUR per month per class.
The Chinese government has been trying for years to encourage people to have more children, and people are showing them the middle finger. The main reason (apart from some people, especially women, who simply don’t want to have kids) is that raising a child is too expensive in China. Education is a business, and a very profitable one, it seems. And don’t get me started on international schools that charge exorbitant fees and then have moms teaching classes, so their children can attend the school for free. If I am paying 20,000+ 30,000 EUR per year (thanks Johannes for the updated figure), I expect to have no less than PhDs with over 10 years of experience as teachers, not some random mom who just completed an online teaching certification!
Wow the poor kids. Quite an eye opener to read this. Hope the government cracks down on the disparity. It’s just not fair that poor kids are even more disadvantaged now.
How is it in Singapore? I guess children are also under a lot of pressure there.
Yeah it’s super high pressure here with lots of tests and extra private tuition classes. The poor kids. The richer families have an unfair advantage for sure. It’s sad.
Was the pool filled with Evian 😂
I read this morning (BBC) that in many East Asian countries myopia or shortsightness is on the rise. The main culprit education as the kids aren’t getting outside enough. Crazy huh?
I know Korean kids have the same cram classes too. Crazy crazy. Thankfully Spain isn’t so crazy.
Yes! I also read a while ago that it had been discovered that being shortsighted was related to the amount of time children spent outdoors. I also have the theory that the Chinese writing system contributes to it. Your eyes need to do a lot of work when reading Chinese! When I was a student in Beijing, my eyes were always very tired at the beginning until I got used to reading characters all the time.
I get tired reading Spanish so Chinese I’d be crying within 10 minutes!
My kid and I did so many classes, but many were free and most were cheap, especially at our local YMCA. And all of them were for swimming, gymnastics, or other sports. (It’s very, very hard to tire my child out.) There are a ton of extra math classes and Chinese schools here in Los Angeles, yes, but my child would shiv me in my sleep if I sent him to school on Saturday. (Saturday is for soccer!) What I’ve seen is that all the kids who get extra tutoring at Kumano or Mathnasium do well in early math, and maybe stay on the advanced track until they are about 13-14. After that? Forget it. All that money was wasted. In the U.S., parents tend to spend their money–and lots of it!–on youth sports. They hope for either sports scholarships or sports to help their child get into a good school. And if you have a daughter, sports can really help a field hockey player or volleyball player or soccer player, because legally, universities cannot spend more on male sports than female ones, so all the money that goes to American collegiate football teams and basketball teams has to be equal to the amount spent on women’s sports. This is how the US women became so dominant in soccer.
But yes, this also means that the poor kids in Los Angeles are not going to get the kind of top-notch coaching and opportunities on expensive club teams that the more well-off kids will get. Some of us involved in youth sports see and recognize this; we work very hard on outreach and awarding scholarships to disadvantaged kids. Even so, the system is completely rigged.
Thanks for sharing your experience! The price of university tuition in the US has always baffled me. I don’t know what are the fees now in Spain, but when I studied, the annual fees were around 800-1000 Euro. No one has student debt here! (Well, maybe for MBAs and the like, those can get expensive for Spanish standards).
Oh, college tuition is a nightmare here. It was expensive when I went to school and it’s much worse now. Some Americans are finally beginning to realize that higher taxes for national health care and college tuition would be better than going bankrupt.
Unfortunately, America is often like this. There were many children by High School committing suicide. Too much pressure their entire life to go to an Ivy League School. Also, that’s why in America everyone feels like they need to go to College, go in debt paying for College, when really they aren’t suited for College. There’s a revolution in America over the cost of College that can be $40K+ a year. My children are in late 20s, but when they were young, we had the SAME pressure of putting them in best pre-schools, after classes, music classes, Kumon, etc. Well — at some point, as you are seeing, you have to do what is best for your child and not follow what we are pressured to THINK we need to do.
Here in Spain, it also happens that everyone feels like going to college is a must. Lately I heard the government is trying to promote professional training, which I think it’s a better option for many students and even has better prospects when looking for a job.
Actually SSIS is RMB 225,000 per year, so over 30,000 euro
Oh my, hahaha, thank you, I will update the post. I’ve always been curious if any family actually pays for it, or if it’s always a part of their expat package. It’s a ridiculous amount of money.
The competition (or the assumption of competition) just seems to get worse and worse. My three daughters graduated from a public high school in the US in the late 1980s. They didn’t take any after-school classes, and they didn’t seem to be burdened with a lot of homework, and yet they all got into ivy league colleges. This year my youngest grandchild started high school at a private school in Washington DC, and the school already seems to be preparing them for college and giving them too much homework. I don’t know whether it’s the location near the nation’s capital or whether attitudes are changing. Fortunately, he still has time for soccer every day.
I hope your grandson does well in high school! And I’m glad he still has time for soccer. Young people should not spend all their time studying, there are so many other things and skills to learn…
I read an article by an American mom who lives in NYC writing for The Guardian or something like that — and she has a name for new parenting — the opposite of ‘tiger mom’ which is ‘jellyfish mom’ which I thought was amusing.
Just the idea of heading in the other direction after all the crazy fees and costs of trying to ‘keep up’ and be competitive with other children and families, must be a relief for everyone involved.
Sounds like you are navigating this world of parenting with your head still on :P Good for you. And glad to hear that things are well in Spain, xoxo
I read that article too! Haha. I think I am totally a jellyfish. A. only goes to activities that he enjoys, that are within walking distance, and that don’t break the bank (although here in our town prices are quite affordable for all activities).
Isn’t that funny. What a small world :P Good for you, Marta. xo
It’s more or less same story in India also and I would loves to know what you think about current education system in India ?
My best wishes in the educational journey for son. I bet your hubby is relieved to have a less obsessed, more rational partner in looking at best alternatives. It’s horrible that in China Education is predominantly a profit and builds upon the old cultural value on education in the wrong direction.