BEIJING, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- Authorities in China have issued a guideline to further strengthen the regulation of off-campus non-academic tutoring programs for primary and secondary school students.
The document jointly released by 13 departments, including the Ministry of Education, specifies provisions such as that non-academic tutoring programs should not include content involving school disciplines, while the training class or lesson time should not overlap with the school time of local primary and secondary schools. The document also stipulates that offline training should not end later than 20:30, and that online courses should not continue beyond 21:00.
According to the guideline, training institutions for non-academic tutoring programs are not allowed to charge a fee for a time span of more than three months, or 60 class hours, or more than 5,000 yuan (about 716 U.S. dollars), via lump-sum payment or through disguised forms like charging pre-paid cards.
Employees of these institutions are required to have vocational or professional qualifications, and teachers working for primary and secondary schools are not allowed to be hired by these institutions, read the guideline.
While stressing the significance of strengthening the role of school education as the primary platform, and reversing the examination-oriented trend in education, the guideline makes it clear that the results achieved in off-campus non-academic tutoring programs are prohibited to be linked to the admission criteria of primary and secondary schools, as well as institutions of higher education.
It also aims at establishing a basic policy framework for non-academic tutoring programs across the country by mid 2023, while improving the mechanism of routine supervision. By 2024, it wants the burden of family expenditure on related programs to be effectively reduced, and for non-academic training to become a useful supplement to school education, according to the document. ■
