Mr. Li Hongbin, Deputy to the National People’s Congress and Vice Director of the Teaching Affairs Office, Nanjing Foreign Languages School, talked about the issue of after-school tutoring classes during this year’s NPC & CPPCC annual sessions.

He spoke of his own experience enrolling his child in an after-school tutoring program to catch up with classes in a particular discipline. The tutoring market had not yet taken off like it has today.

He emphasized that the purpose of education was to equip children with a sense of moral consciousness, the ability to learn, and stimulate their curiosity and interest in exploring the unknown, whilst helping them fulfil their potential in both humanities and science. Out-of-school tutoring classes on the other hand aim to improve students’ test-taking skills and cram their minds with fact in a short period of time, which is contrary to the primary purpose of China’s education system.

He highlighted that in some extreme cases the practice of after-school tutoring had even become a source of serious tension in some families: tutoring expenses were becoming an increasingly heavy burden on working parents, while extra classes piled more academic pressure on children who were given almost no rest and as a consequence were unable to get enough sleep. Li concluded by stressing the urgency in regulating the out-of-school industry, to ensure it plays a complementary role to school education, so that it reduces the burden on students and their parents.

(Li Hongbin, Deputy to the National People’s Congress and Vice Director of the Teaching Affairs Office, Nanjing Foreign Languages School)