An Empirical Research On Supplementary Tutoring Of Compulsory Education Students

Private supplementary tutoring has been flourishing in urban China. This form of education attaches itself to mainstream schooling, aiming to enhance the students' school performance, thus is called "shadow education". Currently the research on the topic of supplementary tutoring in China is hard to see. Therefore, we do not know the information about scale, intensity, causality and expense of supplementary tutoring. Besides, we do not comprehend the determinants affecting students' choice of whether to receive supplementary or not. Furthermore, there has been scarce literature on the extensive impact of supplementary tutoring on formal schooling, economy and society.According to the reasons above, the author did the survey in 12 classes in schools of Hongshan district in the city of Wuhan. Based on the survey statistics, we may conclude:There are more than 60% of students of compulsory education receive some form of supplementary tutoring. The higher grade of students, the higher proportions the students receive supplementary tutoring. The 9-grade students, however, due to heavy workload, have the least percentage to receive supplementary tutoring. The earliest time of starting supplementary tutoring is in the third grade in primary school. Nearly half of the students plan to be tutored in the following summer vacation or the next semester. The seventh grade students have the most intense aspiration to receive supplementary tutoring.39.6 percent of surveyed students receive supplementary tutoring of math subject, 36.0% English, 32.0% science and 24.6% Chinese. The students in higher-quality schools have higher percentage of supplementary tutoring than those of lower-quality schools. The students with a better performance in his or her class tend to participate in a supplementary tutoring class, while those with a worse performance tend to have a tutor at home.The intensity of supplementary tutoring is strong. The students who have supplementary tutoring averagely have 4 hours more than those have not. The expenditure on supplementary tutoring has been an important part of house education expense. The average supplementary tutoring expense is 224.8 Yuan, which accounts for 21% of per capita income per person. Therefore, for those economically disadvantaged families, supplementary tutoring expenditure has been a kind of burden. The major ways of seeking information about supplementary tutoring are introduction from friends or fellows of their parents, as well as school teachers.Although major students think that supplementary tutoring improve their school performance, this does not be supported by statistics. The direct reason of receiving supplementary tutoring is to increase school performance. The contradiction between large education-receiving populations and limited high-quality educational resources is the fundamental causation of supplemental tutoring.The school quality and the educational level of parents are the most important factors affecting whether to receive supplementary tutoring or not. School performance level and family economical background of students are not relatively significant factors.Supplementary tutoring has a series of impact on school education, society and economy. It aggravates the students' burden while provides diversified educational choices for those with spare capacity. It has a negative effect on mainstream schooling while its positive effect cannot be neglected. It creates new jobs while forms a grey area against government supervision. It also increases the social inequality.