China's Crackdown on Pricey Tutoring Schools Upset Parents
Voice of America
BEIJING - For Helen Cui's daughter, a 10-year-old rising fifth grader facing the September start of classes, tutoring is a nonnegotiable part of a middle-class Beijing childhood.
Her mother, a white-collar worker in a foreign enterprise, has established a grueling weekly extracurricular schedule that includes three hours of English lessons, three hours of math lessons, three hours of Chinese lessons, one hour of swimming lessons, one hour of piano lessons, and 90 minutes of a small online English class taught by an American who tells a story and then leads the handful of kids through a discussion. Cui estimates these additional lessons cost around $16,000 a year, an expenditure she believes is necessary to ensure her daughter's chance at the good life, an opportunity that hinges on excellent grades, excellent test scores and admission to an excellent college or university. But new regulations issued by China's Ministry of Education are placing restrictions on private tutoring, or "cram schools." Some see this as the government's attempt to reduce the cost of raising a child as it calls for couples to have two, or even three, children after its one-child policy left China with too few workers to support the many retirees.A TV screen shows a file image of North Korea's rocket launch during a news program at a bus terminal in Seoul, South Korea, May 27, 2024. FILE - Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi speaks to reporters in Colombo, July 29, 2023. FILE - A TV screen shows a report of North Korea's spy satellite into orbit with its third launch attempt this year with an image of North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Nov. 22, 2023.
Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. Fire rages following an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced Palestinians, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in this still picture taken from a video, May 26, 2024. Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. A member of the bomb squad of the Israeli police collects debris after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants struck in the Israeli city of Herzliya on May 26, 2024.