Tutoring irregularities prompt crackdown

Courses banned

The quick growth of the private education sector, driven by strong demand from parents and students, has attracted increased scrutiny.

Last month, the Beijing municipal administration for market regulation handed out fines of 500,000 yuan to online education companies GSX Techedu, Xueersi Online School, Koolearn and Gaosi for misleading customers with false advertising.

This month in Chongqing, 18 tutoring companies were named by the municipal education commission and the administration for market regulation after behavior that breached government requirements for after-school training, including teaching students material that was too advanced, false advertising and hiring teachers with no credentials.

To ensure students get enough sleep, the Ministry of Education recently reiterated that after-school tutoring companies should not assign homework to them and that courses should end before 8:30 pm.

The ministry also banned tutoring courses for kindergarten pupils and stressed that kindergartens should not teach primary school courses.

In February 2018, the ministry and three other government departments issued a guideline to regulate the after-school tutoring industry. Schools were banned from considering a child's extracurricular qualifications for enrollment, while tutoring companies were forbidden from engaging in exam-oriented tuition methods or hiring teachers from public schools.

In August 2018, the General Office of the State Council, China's Cabinet, issued a guideline aimed at regulating cram schools. Activities banned by the guideline included: teaching students advanced material in core subjects such as Chinese, math and English; assigning homework to students; organizing competitions in core subjects; and accepting advanced payment for more than three months of courses.

Chu Zhaohui, senior researcher at the National Institute of Education Sciences, said the requirements for tutoring companies remained the same. While previous regulations focused on such companies' credentials, the latest crackdown is aimed at more-specific violations.

Tutoring companies are expected to face greater scrutiny as different government departments make determined efforts to implement guidelines issued previously, Chu said.

However, as students still have to achieve high scores to gain admittance to good schools, they remain motivated to attend tutoring courses, he said.