A Is for Anxiety: Tutoring Clampdown Tests China’s Parents

Confident her child would one day be competing for a spot at Beijing’s best schools, He Jingjing knew to start preparing early. When her daughter turned three, she enrolled her at an English-language training center and in an online math course. Two years later, her daughter’s list of tutoring classes had grown to a dozen subjects, including violin and fencing.

In the capital’s Haidian District, infamous for its social pressure to make sure children get good grades, a kindergartener with such a busy schedule is barely noteworthy. “Most students in Haidian are attending extracurricular classes of one kind or another,” He tells Sixth Tone. “It’s impossible for them to completely rely on what’s taught in schools.”

Collectively, Chinese parents spent over 619 billion yuan ($95.6 billion) on after-school tutoring in 2019 according to Macquarie Research, which in May projected that figure would double by 2023.

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