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What is the Tutorial Culture in Hong Kong?
Hong Kong is a competitive city where academic results are being highly prioritized among schools and parents. In order to achieve better grades and stand out from peers in examinations, Hong Kong students attend various tutorial classes. A report by Mark Bray and Chad Lykins, Professors of Education in the University of Hong Kong, stated that 72.5% of students in lower secondary, 81.9% in middle secondary and 85.5% in senior secondary had once received tutoring. This finding depicted the popularity and the demand in the market of tutorial courses in the society.

Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education(HKDSE) is a public examination which accesses the ability of senior students in Hong Kong. The grades are then used as a major reference by the Joint University Programmes Admissions System(JUPAS) to determine whether they can get into universities or not. A recent research done by The Mental Health Association of Hong Kong reflects that more than 50% of the interviewed students are stressful about facing the HKDSE. As a result, they go for tutorial lessons hoping to secure a place in universities.

Under the highly pressured examination system, the emerging tutorial centers aim to provide tips that tackle different public examination questions and impart specific answering skills to students. This tactic attracts students to register for the courses and tutorial centers are welcomed by the majority of the students in Hong Kong.

Exam-oriented Education System
The Hong Kong Education Bureau has developed a broad curriculum and set up Territory-wide System Assessment to assess Hong Kong students. The Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE), the university entrance exam, is rather competitive as there are more applicants than that of university places. In 2015, there were over 70 thousands of students in Hong Kong attended HKDSE to compete for around 13 thousands places in universities. In order to enroll in universities, secondary schools in Hong Kong tend to emphasize on ‘scoring high’ in exam. In consequences, many students would like to learn more exam skills from tutors in hopes of scoring high in the university entrance exam so to secure a place in university.

Peer Influence
Most Hong Kong Students receive tutoring because they conform to peer pressure. In order to avoid being left out, students may join tutorials if their peers invite them. Students also hope to increase their competitiveness among their peers by learning extra tips from tutors.

Parental Influence
Under the influence of Confucianism, parents of Hong Kong value hard work and study, they would like their children to strive for academic excellence. They also want their children to ‘win at the start’, so to equip their children with abilities to perform well in school and extra curricula activities. Many parents thus enroll their children into tutorial classes in pursuit of a fruitful future. Some of the tutorial centers even set up classes for kindergarten toddlers, claiming that ‘competitions will come after you whether you like it or not.

Over-reliance on Tutors
Flaunting their success in helping students to achieve satisfied grades in public examinations is a common propaganda among tutorial centers. Professor Ng, Shun Wing from the Hong Kong Institute of Education stated in his journal that students rely too much on the meticulously-designed notes and tips from their tutors. As a result, students pay less attention in ordinary lessons and gradually become anaclitic to the Tutor Kings and Queens.

Increase in Family's Expenditure
According to a survey conducted by the University of Hong Kong, an average of $9,236 is spent yearly by families as tutorial fees, contributing to half of their total academic expenses. As mentioned in the Hong Kong Economic Times, students easily follow their peers to attend tutorial lessons because of the Bandwagon Effect. They do not understand what courses are suitable for them, causing a waste of money in some cases. This increase a family’s expenditure and may result in financial burden.

Ideological Rigidity among Students (Shadow Education)
Since students demonstrates a specific pattern of answering techniques learnt from tutorial centers, this learning environment is defined as Shadow Education. The large teaching scale causes formalization of academic products and impels students to lap up knowledge without contemplation. This violates the original significance of learning as the understanding of knowledge is incomprehensive. It also slows down the development of students’ generic skills, including critical thinking and creativity. This leads to the phenomenon in which students can only score in high but low in ability.

Star Images of Tutors
Tutorial lessons have become a commercial product as the industry continues to bloom in Hong Kong. In order to attract more students, ‘Tutor Kings and Queens’ are deliberately presented as young and good looking. The teaching mode of these fashionable tutors is also relatively more interesting than conventional daytime schools.

Special Tutorial Notes
“Special essence book” is another selling point of tutorial centers as it concentrates most of the examination skills and examples, including designated sentences and specific phrases for student to recite.

Class Types
There are two types of tutorial classes in Hong Kong including the “Video class” and “Live class”. The former one means the tutor conducts the lesson through a recorded video with notes edited by himself, students can consult the tutor or his helpers online afterwards. On the other hand, there will be more interactions between students and tutor in live class as student can directly ask question anytime during the lesson.

Considerable Income
The tutor centers usually charge students around $500 HK dollars or so, some individual subjects courses set their price even higher. By 2011, the tutorial industry has made a profit of 2 billion Hong Kong dollars.