‘Competitiveness’ at a new high in Hong Kong
13 Dec 2013 11:39 PM GMT
For many of Chow’s students, the advertisements may be the closest they’ll ever get to him. The 30-year-old teaches English grammar to thousands of secondary school pupils, who attend his after-school lessons or watch video replays of them at Modern Education’s 14 branches.
Chow is a celebrity tutor in Hong Kong, where there’s big money to be made offering extracurricular lessons to parents desperately seeking an edge for their children preparing for the city’s intense public entrance exam for university.
Global student rankings out last week highlighted the city’s cut-throat academic atmosphere.
Hong Kong teens, along with Shanghai, Singapore, South Korea and Japan, dominated the list compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
American students showed little improvement and failed to reach the top 20 in math, science or reading.
Students in East Asian societies have long relied on so-called “cram schools,” but Hong Kong has taken them to a new level in recent years, with the majority of students attending the city’s nearly 1,000 tutorial centers. Academies use brash marketing to make them look like pop stars.
Chow is a celebrity tutor in Hong Kong, where there’s big money to be made offering extracurricular lessons to parents desperately seeking an edge for their children preparing for the city’s intense public entrance exam for university.
Global student rankings out last week highlighted the city’s cut-throat academic atmosphere.
Hong Kong teens, along with Shanghai, Singapore, South Korea and Japan, dominated the list compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
American students showed little improvement and failed to reach the top 20 in math, science or reading.
Students in East Asian societies have long relied on so-called “cram schools,” but Hong Kong has taken them to a new level in recent years, with the majority of students attending the city’s nearly 1,000 tutorial centers. Academies use brash marketing to make them look like pop stars.
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