Beijing 'plans Ban On Vacation Tutoring'

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2021-06-17 HKT 09:17

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  • Billboard offer English tuition in a subway station in Shanghai. Tuition has become increasingly popular on the mainland in recent years. File image: Shutterstock

    Billboard offer English tuition in a subway station in Shanghai. Tuition has become increasingly popular on the mainland in recent years. File image: Shutterstock

Beijing is poised to unveil a much tougher than anticipated crackdown on the mainland's US$120 billion private tutoring industry, four sources told the Reuters news agency, including trial bans on vacation tutoring and restrictions on advertising.

The new rules, which aim both to ease pressure on children and boost the country's birth rate by lowering family living costs, could be announced as early as next week and take effect next month, two of the people with knowledge of the plans said.

The imposition of a trial ban on both online and offline tutoring over the summer and winter holidays in Beijing, Shanghai and other major cities, cited by the sources, goes much further than the planned measures first reported by Reuters last month.

"The new rules would be stricter than expected," said one of the sources, a person close to regulators drafting the new rules. "The industry should be preparing for the worst."

The trial vacation ban, which adds to plans to bar online and offline tutoring on weekends during term time, could deprive tutoring companies of as much as 70-80 percent of their annual revenue, two of the sources said.

The changes being drafted by the Ministry of Education and other authorities target the cutthroat tutoring market for school pupils from kindergarten through to the 12th grade, or K-12 pupils, an industry that has grown rapidly in recent years.

More than 75 percent of K-12 pupils – roughly aged from 6 to 18 – in China attended after-school tutoring classes in 2016, according to the most recent figures from the Chinese Society of Education, and anecdotal evidence suggests that percentage has risen.

The planned industry crackdown, which Reuters last month reported had already forced at least one major company providing tutoring services to put a billion-dollar fundraising round on ice, is being driven from the top, said three of the sources.

President Xi Jinping last week said schools should be responsible for pupil learning, rather than tutoring companies.

"The education departments are correcting this phenomenon," Xinhua quoted Xi as saying. (Reuters)

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