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black sheep of tuition industry?

Writer: loocheewee84loocheewee84
Feb 212 min read

The views expressed below are solely of Mr Alvin Loo’s and does not representing the opinion of AcesMath’s.



Minister of Education Mr Chan recently gave an interview with ChannelNewsAsia (CNA) and in the interview he pointed out some black sheep within the tuition industry:


Specifically, two issues:

1.      Centres touting their services (on first day of school), seemingly prying on fear of missing out (FOMO) of parents;

2.      Centres conducting their own selection test, refusing entry for some children and using high performing students as their poster boys/girls.


I don’t have much opinion on (1) since I see FOMO as a common marketing strategy amongst property agents and financial advisors too.


On (2), I think we need to distinguish between institutions and the landscape. Min Chan compared centres conducting their entry test with MOE schools, saying that no students are ever denied an opportunity to be educated.


But truth be told:

  1. There’s definitely another tuition centre ready to accept the kid refused by the original place;

  2. MOE schools conduct their selection tests too in the form of DSA and what not.


If you view the tuition industry as a whole, I doubt you can find any child who is refused by the whole industry. MOE schools also do its own selection, and kids may not necessarily enrol in their first choice, by various reasons (not restricted to) like:


  1. demand is much higher than supply and if an institution is in such a privileged position, it can therefore raise its price (think BTO, SBF) or do some screening;

  2. the institution has a development niche and hence requires its students to fulfil certain requirements.


So I think we should perhaps think about this deeper, are the so called black sheep of the tuition industry the problem or are they just symptoms that manifested from a much deeper underlying problem?


I do appreciate Min Chan saying how some kids may benefit from tuition due to different instructional strategy, medium and other lesson parameters. I would very much prefer to see him tackling issues like:

1.      DSA (and the trainings for it)

2.      Affiliations

3.      IP


Alvin


 
 
 

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