Parentocracy within meritocracy: parental perspective on lecture-style English private tutoring in Hong Kong

Abstract

The shift from meritocracy to parentocracy in contemporary societies has resulted in a situation where children’s educational success increasingly depends on parents’ wealth and wishes rather than children’s ability and efforts. Better-off parents can afford extra learning activities to increase children’s competitive edge. This phenomenon is fuelled by ‘English fever’ in many non-English-speaking contexts, driving parents to subscribe to English private tutoring (EPT), or shadow education, for children. This paper reports on the findings from a larger year-long study on lecture-style EPT involving Hong Kong secondary students and their parents, schoolteachers and tutors. With a focus on the parental perspective, it expands the notion of parentocracy to EPT with qualitative empirical evidence from 14 parents. The findings unveil parents’ complex, ambivalent and contradictory attitudes toward EPT. These parents played a supporting rather than a dominant role in children’s education at the senior secondary stage. Despite their aspirations for their children, they did not have high expectations on the returns from their ‘investment’ in EPT because they believed children’s success ultimately depended on their own ability and efforts. This study reveals the subordinating role of parentocracy in a meritocratic curriculum where academic success is largely determined by results in high-stakes examinations.

Keywords:

• English as an additional language
• lecture-style English private tutoring
• Hong Kong
• meritocracy
• parentocracy
• shadow education

Introduction

For more than two decades, private tutoring has been omnipresent and has become a multimillion-dollar business around the world. It has also gained increasing attention among academics, educators and policy makers because of its profound impact on schooling as well as economic and social development (Bray and Lykins 2012; Dang and Rogers 2008). The metaphor of ‘shadow education’ has been used to indicate private tutoring because it mimics the mainstream curriculum (Bray 2017; Yung and Bray 2017). Despite its growing prevalence in the West (Buchmann, Condron, and Roscigno 2010; Smyth 2009), private tutoring is most intense in Confucian-heritage settings, where parents regard education as a crucial means for social mobility (Bray and Lykins 2012). In many of these non-English-speaking contexts (i.e. English is primarily used as a second or foreign language rather than the first language), English plays a significant role in the national curriculum because it is a symbol of power and wealth and is important for further studies and career (Kirkpatrick and Liddicoat 2019). However, it is usually learnt as a school subject and an additional language and is not often used for genuine communication in the daily life. Since English instruction tends to be confined to schools, many parents pay for English private tutoring (EPT) to maximise their children’s learning of English after school (Hamid, Khan, and Islam 2018; Yung 2020b). This phenomenon is particularly obvious in Hong Kong as students’ informal language learning is ‘primarily of a receptive and private nature with a strong pragmatic orientation and limited social functions’ (Lai and Lyu 2019, p. 285). This results in the growing popularity of EPT in many non-English speaking contexts as an important out-of-school language learning activity.

Previous studies on EPT have mainly focused on students’ attitudes and their motivations and experiences (e.g. Chung 2013; Hamid, Khan, and Islam 2018; Yung 2015, 2019). Although some studies have examined parental factors influencing the choice of tutoring, such as socioeconomic status (SES) and parental beliefs toward education (e.g. Butler and Le 2018; Ireson and Rushforth 2014), few have investigated parents’ motives for supporting their children’s enrolment in EPT courses and their attitudes toward it. Parents’ motives are their reasons for supporting children’s enrolment in EPT, and their attitudes refer to their feelings or opinions on EPT. A study conducted in Mainland China shows that parents who are well-educated and have stable jobs spent about 15% of their income on purchasing EPT, English movies, storybooks and summer camps (Chao, Xue, and Xu 2014). South Korean parents also invest a large portion of their income in their children’s education, while more than half of the money was spent on EPT (Park 2009). In a similar vein, parents of young children in Hong Kong are willing to spend thousands of dollars on preparation classes for English language tests (e.g. Cambridge Young Learners English Test) (Chik and Besser 2011). The high demand for EPT has also been observed in other places such as Bangladesh (Hamid, Khan, and Islam 2018), Japan (Dierkes 2013) and Taiwan (Chung 2013).

The current era of educational privatisation has led to a culture of parentocracy, an ideology that students’ educational outcomes are determined by parents’ aspirations and economic capital (Barrett DeWiele and Edgerton 2016; Brown 1990). Wealthy parents could more easily support their children through buying out-of-school learning resources such as private tutoring, while those who cannot afford such resources are inevitably disadvantaged (Dang and Rogers 2008; Liu and Bray 2020). However, when private tutoring, particularly the cheaper lecture-style one, has become more accessible and affordable in developed societies, parents from lower SES can also subscribe to EPT for their children (Tan 2017; Yung 2020b).

To date, there is a paucity of empirical data showing parents’ motives for paying for their children’s EPT within this privatised educational context. This is an important area of research since parents are key stakeholders of EPT as consumers of this monetarily purchasable resource for their children (Carmel 2019; Gupta 2020). The increasingly prevailing ideology of parentocracy, fuelled by ‘English fever’ (Fish, Parris, and Troilo 2017; Park 2009) in non-English-speaking societies worldwide, has also suggested an urgent need to understand the EPT phenomenon from the parental perspective. This study expands the ideology of parentocracy revealed in the trend of EPT participation. By eliciting views from the parents of senior secondary students who attend EPT classes in Hong Kong, it is envisaged that a more complete understanding of parentocracy can be unveiled.

Conceptual framework

The ideology of parentocracy was proposed by Brown (1990) to illustrate the transitions of educational trends in England. He argued that the first wave was characterised by the rise of mass schooling for working class, whereas the second wave was featured by meritocracy, meaning that education was based on individual merit and achievement (Young 2017). Afterwards, the second wave was replaced by the third wave of parentocracy, indicating that children’s education increasingly relied on parents’ wealth and wishes rather than their own abilities or efforts. The transition from meritocracy to parentocracy was also found in America, Australia and New Zealand (Blackmore and Hutchison 2010; Hursh 2005), which promoted educational privatisation under the slogans of ‘parental choice’, ‘standards of excellence’ and ‘free market’ for educational success (Brown 1990, p. 78).

Although the ideology of parentocracy was first invoked in the 1990s, it still offers insight into analysing and characterising parents’ behaviours in contemporary societies. Researchers have recently revisited this notion. Barrett DeWiele and Edgerton (2016) identified parentocracy as a socio-political logic emphasising parental consumer choice and free-market mechanisms and as a parenting logic that underscores parents’ proactive intervention for optimising children’s opportunity in social mobility contest. Contextualising this notion, Tan (2017) argued that in Singapore where private tutoring is more affordable or even free, parentocracy is no longer confined to wealthy families. Based on her observation, she proposed that parentocracy co-exists with meritocracy when admission to prestigious schools is still largely determined by results in high-stakes examinations rather than parents’ wealth and wishes.

The defining characteristic of educational parentocracy is ‘not the amount of education received, but the social basis upon which educational selection is organised’ (Brown 1990, p. 66). Guided by this notion, the wealth and wishes of parents are the determinants of children’s education choice. Doherty and Dooley (2018) argued that the shift from schools as providers of education to parents as consumers has ‘responsibilised’ parents and ‘nudged’ them toward shadow education. As a tradable educational resource, private tutoring is welcomed by parents who can afford it. Researchers have found a close relationship between family SES and private tutoring engagement, noting that well-off families and parents with higher academic qualifications tend to arrange more and better private tutoring opportunities for children (Liu and Bray 2020; Zhang and Bray 2018). It has also been reported that in non-English-speaking countries where the English education in mainstream schools is inadequate, the children who have more opportunities of learning English are those whose parents can afford the fee of EPT (Hamid, Khan, and Islam 2018). As English is increasingly regarded as a valuable linguistic capital, undergoing a process of commodification (Bourdieu 1991; Heller 2010), many people believe that the competence in English can be accumulated by making monetary investment (Xiong and Yuan 2018).

Studies (e.g. Sriprakash, Proctor, and Hu 2016; Zhang and Bray 2018) have shown parents’ aspirations for their children’s academic success and social mobility as a key motive for seeking private tutoring. Many parents believe that advanced private tutoring could give their children a head start and increase their chance of better achievements at school, pursue higher degrees and thus acquire greater earnings in life (Sriprakash, Proctor, and Hu 2016; Zhang 2019). They also express fear of seeing their children unable to keep up with peers who are receiving private tutoring, so they feel obliged to subscribe to private tutoring for their children (Dierkes 2013; Ireson and Rushforth 2014). They also believe that there is a huge gap between the demand of the school curriculum and what is required in public examinations. Schoolteachers are supposed to cultivate well-rounded students rather than teach to the test, but students are in need of examination skills and this is where private tutoring fills the gap (Yung and Yuan 2020; Zhang and Bray 2018). This has further exacerbated parents’ anxiety toward children’s education and influenced their decisions.

Despite increasing research attention to private tutoring from the parental perspective, few studies have investigated parents’ attitudes toward EPT under the prevailing culture of parentocracy and ‘English fever’ in non-English-speaking contexts. Moreover, previous studies tend to focus on primary or junior secondary students’ parents who usually play a dominant role in and exert more control over their children’s education, including subscribing to tutoring for their children (e.g. Chao, Xue, and Xu 2014; Liu and Bray 2020; Sriprakash, Proctor, and Hu 2016). Senior secondary students tend to make their own decisions to participate in tutoring and their parents usually play a supporting role (i.e. paying the tuition when their children ask for it) (Yung 2019). These parents may have different aspirations for their children and attitudes toward EPT compared to those of younger children. These voids need to be filled for a more comprehensive understanding of parentocracy in non-English-speaking contexts where EPT is widely sought.

This study expands the notion of parentocracy to language education through investigating the motives of senior secondary students’ parents for supporting their children’s enrolment in EPT courses and their attitudes toward EPT. It addressed the following research questions:

1. What are the motives of senior secondary students’ parents to pay for their children’s tuition fee for English private tutoring?

2. What are the attitudes of senior secondary students’ parents toward their children’s enrolment in English private tutoring?

The study

This study draws from a larger year-long study investigating senior secondary students’ EPT experience in 16 tutorial schools (Yung 2019). Quantitative data were obtained from 2,216 students. Qualitative data were collected from 18 students, 14 parents, four tutors and four schoolteachers. While the data sources of the larger study involved surveys, multiple semi-structured interviews, student reflective journals and classroom observations, this paper focuses primarily on the interview data from parents.

The research context

The study was conducted in Hong Kong, where competition for further studies in the public education system is fierce. Inherited from the imperial examinations in ancient China, Hong Kong has a meritocratic curriculum because students have to make efforts to pass a centralised competitive examination to pursue higher education and become members of elites (Poocharoen and Brillantes 2013). Therefore, secondary students are highly examination-oriented, and many enrol in tutorial courses to prepare for the examination (Yung 2019). Hong Kong has a high enrolment rate of private tutoring compared to other Asian jurisdictions (Bray and Lykins 2012). A survey of 1,646 students conducted in 2011/2012 showed that 53.8% of Secondary 3 and 71.8% of Secondary 6 students had received private tutoring in the past 12 months (Zhan et al. 2013). EPT is particularly popular because English is a compulsory subject in the curriculum, and its examination result is heavily counted for university admission. Moreover, as in many other non-English-speaking contexts, Hong Kong suffers from ‘English fever’, evidenced by an excessive zeal for English learning and the intense demand for EPT (Chik and Besser 2011; Yung 2015).

Among the various forms (e.g. one-on-one, small group, online), lecture-style tutoring is most widely chosen, partly because it is more affordable. For example, a monthly tuition fee for a lecture-style course of four 1.25-hour lessons is typically HKD500 (approximately USD64), while the tuition fee for one-on-one tutoring is around HKD300 per hour (approximately USD38) depending on the qualifications of the tutor (Yung 2015; Yung and Bray 2017). Many tutors in tutorial schools market themselves as examination experts and celebrities to attract parents and students to choose their courses (Yung and Yuan 2020).

Participants

The participants were recruited after obtaining ethical approval at the university with which the authors were affiliated. Fourteen parents gave their informed consent to participate in the study. They were 12 mothers and 2 fathers of Secondary 6 students receiving EPT courses in Hong Kong. The reason for recruiting these parents was that their children studied the local school curriculum and would sit for the school-leaving examination at the end of the academic year. It was a key stage of the children’s academic life as a conclusion of their secondary education and preparation for higher education. The parents were recruited through snowball sampling from the students. Their educational background varied, from lower primary to postgraduate. Based on the conversations with the parents and ongoing dialogue throughout the year with their children (Yung 2019), none of them were extremely wealthy, but almost all could afford the tuition.¹ Daisy was the only parent who needed government financial support, but she could still use her social capital to borrow money for her daughter’s tuition (see Yung 2020b). The profiles of the participants are illustrated in Table 1. Pseudonyms were created for each participant to protect their identity.

Table 1. Profiles of participants.

	Participant	Gender	Educational background	Whether the tuition fee is a burden
1	Anna	Female	Senior secondary	No
2	Chloe	Female	Senior secondary	Yes
3	Daisy	Female	Lower primary	Yes
4	Helen	Female	Junior secondary	Yes
5	Ivy	Female	Senior secondary	No
6	Jane	Female	Senior secondary	Yes
7	Kate	Female	Upper primary	Yes
8	Lily	Female	Junior secondary	No
9	Nina	Female	Senior secondary	No
10	Samuel	Male	Junior secondary	No
11	Tess	Female	Undergraduate	Yes
12	William	Male	Upper primary	Yes
13	Yasmine	Female	Postgraduate	No
14	Zara	Female	Senior secondary	Yes

Data collection

The data were collected through interviews with 14 parents toward the end of the academic year. The interview probes for parents (see the Appendix) were guided by the conceptual framework of parentocracy, focusing on the parents’ wealth and wishes in relation to their children’s education (Barrett DeWiele and Edgerton 2016; Brown 1990). Specifically, the parents were first asked to describe their own educational background, family financial status and English learning environment at home. These questions allowed the researchers to understand more about the participants and hence generate more relevant questions during the interview. The participants then shared their aspirations for their children, views on children’s English learning and on the relationships between mainstream schooling and private tutoring. They also elaborated on their reasons for financially supporting their children to enrol in EPT courses and attitudes toward EPT. The dialogues with parents were also informed by the views from their children, who had participated in five interviews in the larger year-long study (Yung 2019). All interviews were conducted in Cantonese, the first language of the interviewer and the participants. They were audio-recorded for later transcription.

Data analysis

The interviews were transcribed verbatim and then translated into English for content analysis. The transcripts were read and re-read by the authors independently. At the beginning, an inductive approach through open coding was adopted to allow interesting themes to emerge. General themes pertaining to the research questions and the conceptual framework of parentocracy were identified, including parents’ background, motives for supporting their children to enrol in EPT courses and their attitudes toward EPT. Then, more in-depth coding was conducted with more refined themes such as aspirations for children, English learning environment at home, perceptions of schooling and tutoring, and whether EPT was worth the money. Attention was paid to excerpts revealing the ideology of parentocracy, i.e. parents’ wealth and wishes in relation to their children’s education (Barrett DeWiele and Edgerton 2016; Brown 1990).

The data analysis process was interpretative and iterative. Parents’ beliefs in the importance of English, their views on tutoring compared to schooling, and their aspirations for children’s studies and career were categorised as sub-themes for motives, given that these could be parents’ reasons for financially supporting their children to enrol in EPT. Parents’ opinions on the effectiveness of EPT (e.g. affirming the effectiveness of EPT but pointing out its negative sides) and feelings on the tuition fee paid (e.g. regarding EPT as an economic burden but believing it is worth paying the tuition) were treated as sub-themes for attitudes. A coding scheme then emerged which guided re-coding in a deductive approach (Table 2). Subsequently, a cross-case analysis was conducted to identify the similarities and differences among the 14 parents. Excerpts showing different motives and attitudes from parents were highlighted for contrast and comparison. To ensure trustworthiness, the two authors engaged in critical dialogue throughout the process of data interpretation.

Table 2. Coding scheme.

Broad themes	Sub-themes	Codes
Parents’ backgrounds	General family profile	• Parents’ education background • Family structure
	Parents’ wealth	• Self-evaluated family economic status • Perceived pressure from paying the tuition fee of EPT • English learning environment at home
Parents’ motives for supporting children to enrol in EPT	Parents’ wishes and their beliefs in the importance of English	• English as an important subject for children’s future study and career • English as an important tool for communication • Parents’ expectation on children’s studies and career
	Parents’ views on tutoring compared to mainstream schooling	• Parents’ comparison between mainstream schooling and EPT • Parents’ views on mainstream schooling • Parents’ understanding on the necessity of EPT
Parents’ attitudes toward children’s enrolment in EPT	Parents’ opinions on the effectiveness of EPT	• The positive side of EPT • The negative side of EPT • Unsure about the effectiveness of EPT
	Parents’ feelings on the tuition fee paid	• EPT as an economic burden • Worth paying the tuition of EPT • Parents’ expected return of paying the tuition fee of EPT

Findings

Based on the sub-themes and finalised codes, the participants’ motives for supporting their children to subscribe to EPT and their attitudes toward it were identified and summarised into six statements each. Table 3 illustrates the participants who mentioned the identified motives and attitudes, which are further exemplified with relevant excerpts.

Table 3. A summary of the motives and attitudes of the participants.

Participant	Parents’ motives for supporting children to subscribe to EPT						Parents’ attitudes toward children’s enrolment in EPT
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
Anna	√		√	√	√			√	√			√
Chloe	√		√	√	√	√	√			√		√
Daisy		√							√	√	√	√
Helen	√			√					√	√		√
Ivy	√				√			√	√
Jane	√		√	√	√	√		√	√	√		√
Kate		√		√	√	√	√		√	√		√
Lily	√				√		√					√
Nina	√		√		√				√		√	√
Samuel	√		√						√		√	√
Tess	√	√	√		√	√	√	√		√		√
William	√								√	√
Yasmine		√	√			√	√				√	√
Zara	√			√			√		√	√	√	√
	11	4	7	6	8	5	6	4	10	8	5	12

Motives

1. English learning is very important for children’s future study and career.

2. English learning is important for international communication.

3. I wish my child to be admitted by university and EPT helps my child in preparing for the public examination.

4. I cannot help my child’s English learning, and EPT could offer help.

5. I believe mainstream schooling is not good (enough) and EPT is supplementary to mainstream schooling.

6. Children who do not attend EPT are disadvantaged, because many others are doing so.

Attitudes

7. EPT is effective (raising examination scores, psychological comfort).

8. EPT has negative sides (too examination-oriented, lowering children’s learning motivation).

9. I am not sure whether EPT is effective.

10. EPT is an economic burden to my family.

11. It is worth supporting children to subscribe to EPT.

12. I’m willing to pay the tuition fee, but I don’t expect much return from EPT.

Paying tuition fee to optimise children’s academic success

All parents indicated that they were not the one who initiated their children’s enrolment in EPT. They paid the tuition fee upon the request of their children at the senior secondary stage of schooling. According to parents’ interview data, some children initiated the idea of attending EPT mainly because they wanted to strengthen examination skills (Anna and Tess). Nina said her daughter experienced peer pressure as ‘everyone was having tutoring’ and ‘she felt she would be disadvantaged’. Her daughter played a dominant role in choosing her favoured tutorial centre because she could receive relevant information from her peers. Upon their children’s request, the participants paid the tuition fee with the belief that EPT could optimise the chance for their children’s university admission. Among the 14 parents, half expressed strong aspirations for their children to pursue university studies.

I truly believe that for any person, as long as you work hard … and you are passionate, actually, I think you must have the chance of getting into university. (Yasmine)

I can’t imagine my child couldn’t get a university degree. (Nina)

Samuel mentioned that even if his daughter could not secure a place in public universities, he would support her to apply for self-financed degree programmes, which also required a pass in the English examination.

Other parents did not consider their children’s pursuit of higher education essential. Although they paid for their children’s EPT to increase their learning opportunities, they tended to attribute the result of university admission to their children’s ability and effort. In their view, ‘getting into university could not be forced’ (William) and was ‘not a must’ (Zara). Parents who did not have concrete aspirations for their children still hoped that their children could make an effort in their studies, be able to take care of themselves financially, and lead a happy and healthy life in the future.

Regardless of their aspirations, all parents considered English important for their children’s future success, so EPT was a means through which their children could improve their English competence. This is exemplified in the following excerpts:

Learning English is crucial because English is an international language. (Ivy)

You need English in university and when you go to work. (Jane)

As society nowadays emphasises English proficiency, and Hong Kong is an international financial city, you can’t really just not care about English. (Anna)

Samuel shared his work experience to describe the prevailing and essential use of English in the workplace:

English is very important because I’m working … in the toy exporting industry. We are working for … for its operation. … I always have the chance to meet foreigners and speak English.

These excerpts reveal that parents paid for their children’s EPT because of the instrumental values of English, i.e. a crucial means for their children to prepare for future studies and career.

‘Outsourcing’ English learning at home and school to EPT

Parents paid the tuition fee because they perceived that EPT played a supplementary role to their children’s English learning at home. Although Chloe, Nina, Tess, Zara and Samuel tried to create an English environment at home by occasionally communicating with their children in English, they did not think it was effective enough in enhancing their children’s English competence. Moreover, most parents did not have a university degree and considered themselves incompetent in teaching their children English at the senior secondary stage of schooling. Jane lamented:

I don’t know how to read…. I mean I’m not interested in reading English newspaper … so I need to rely on school…. I mean relying on those institutions outside to help her. My stance is that I have done my part as a mother.

Even if parents had the competence to teach their children English, they did not have the time because most of them had a full-time job. English learning at home therefore had to be ‘outsourced’ (Nina) to EPT.

Moreover, some parents paid for EPT because of their disappointment about English teaching at school. Eight parents directly expressed their dissatisfaction. For instance, Lily commented that ‘if schools in Hong Kong could help students well, there would not have been so many tutorial schools and star tutors outside’. Nina condemned streaming in schools as it led to educational inequality:

Elite students are allocated with the most advanced teaching resources and low achievers are provided with extra learning support. However, those average students are ignored, so they need help from tutoring outside school.

Chloe described school teaching as ‘a rush’ because the curriculum was so packed that schoolteachers even encouraged tutoring and drilling after school:

Sometimes teachers at school may say, ‘Do more exercises! Attend tutorial classes! Practise more!’

She continued to suggest that ‘teachers at school didn’t explain concepts well, but tutors explained more clearly’. This comparison was probably made by students and transmitted to parents, as empirical data showed that students believed tutors to be more effective than schoolteachers overall, especially in that they could teach examination skills in a logical and explicit way (Yung 2020a). Tess appreciated the ‘significant improvement’ her daughter made after attending EPT with the endorsement of her daughter’s schoolteacher:

Her schoolteacher told her that she has improved in the school internal English exam after attending tutorial classes. Take writing as an example, her grammar has shown significant improvements.

In a similar vein, other parents expressed frustration and scepticism about the quality of schoolteachers. They questioned their English proficiency (e.g. accent and grammatical accuracy) and competence in teaching. Ivy also criticised young teachers for not being experienced enough and suggested that mainstream schooling and private tutoring ‘should operate in parallel’. Tess elaborated:

I would say they complement each other. [My daughter] told me about her school that teachers only teach basic theories, but don’t usually teach you how to take the exams skilfully. However, the tutorial schools focus on this kind of skills.

Ambivalent attitudes toward the effectiveness of EPT

Interestingly, most parents held ambivalent attitudes toward the effectiveness of EPT. While some (Chloe, Lily, Tess and Yasmine) recognised the efficacy of EPT of emphasising its examination-oriented nature as well as their children’s improved examination results, others (Anna, Ivy, Jane and Tess) also pointed out the negative sides of EPT. Among them, Tess evaluated EPT in a critical way, saying that her daughter improved a lot in writing due to attending EPT, but learning at tutorial centres was like ‘eating fast-food’ because of the cramming nature of tutoring. Ivy considered tutorial schools ‘too commercial’ and ‘not educational enough’. Jane criticised its overly examination-oriented feature:

They are exam-oriented. So, if it were not for the purpose of exam, I would not have let her take the tutorial classes. Basically … I mean … er … but they are really exam-oriented. They are not consolidating your foundation.

The data reveal parents’ views about the seemingly mutually exclusive nature between learning English for examinations and learning English for authentic communication. Even for those who believed that EPT could help their children acquire useful skills for examinations, they were generally unsure whether it would enhance their children’s English proficiency. Nina added that how much children gained from EPT, whether examination skills or language competence, depended on their own effort and learning style. This comment resonates with Tess’s remark that ‘how much she can get from tutorial classes is all hers’.

Parents also held diverse attitudes concerning the impact of EPT on children’s motivation to learn. Samuel realised that the money spent on EPT might have motivated his daughter to study hard:

When she knows that we have paid for her tuition, she would work harder … and pay more attention to the tutor’s teaching.

On the contrary, Anna doubted if EPT would enhance children’s learning motivation:

I think it [EPT] is not a healthy trend. Children nowadays are too spoiled, and they have lost their self-motivation to learn.

She elaborated that EPT provided tutees with a huge amount of learning resources, exercises, and tutors always behaved as if they could offer help any time. This could make students rely on tutors’ teaching instead of regulating their own learning. Despite parents’ ambivalent and even contradictory attitudes, EPT seemed to have offered a psychological comfort to some parents (and also their children, see Yung 2020a) because ‘having some tutoring is still better than not having any at all’ (Kate) and ‘it feels better for my daughter to attend some tutorial classes’ (Zara). Ultimately, from the parental perspective, the effectiveness of EPT depended on their children’s effort and how they used the tutors’ resources for their own learning.

‘Investment’ without high expectations of returns

Parents’ attitudes are not only manifested by their perceived effectiveness of EPT, but are also revealed by their feelings on the tuition fee paid. Surprisingly, even if their children could not meet the target results, no parents would consider the money spent a waste. All parents were willing to pay the EPT fee for their children, even though eight of them considered it a financial burden to a certain degree. Daisy, who borrowed money from her relatives for her daughter’s tuition, bemoaned:

I’m a woman taking care of four children … for the four children growing up, merely eating costs a lot. I have a headache on the tuition fee.

Jane also experienced a struggle, but she felt that if her daughter did not have EPT, she might get unsatisfactory examination results. In her view, she was ‘forced to pay the tuition’. These parents, regardless of their actual financial status, showed a rather generous attitude toward the expenditure on EPT. From their perspective, as long as their children studied hard, the tuition fee spent outweighed what they could afford. Lily admitted that her expenditure was ‘an investment’, but she did not expect much return:

Investing in the youngsters nowadays doesn’t guarantee any return. I don’t think of having return now…. As parents, we should just do what we can.

This excerpt reveals a rather contradictory notion of ‘investment’ because people usually invest money and hope its value will increase, but the parents in this study appear to differ. Samuel expressed a similar attitude, saying that ‘the money has been spent anyway, so just let it go’. The participants tended to think that spending money on EPT was what they should and the only thing they could do as parents. This somewhat made them fall into the dilemma of parenting, as Helen explained:

I have done everything I should…. But … are you seizing the opportunity, are you cherishing it? Nowadays, being a parent is much more difficult. The contribution is great, but the reward is less. But all parents … would rather starve themselves, or buy less clothes, to provide more for their children.

Another reason for investing in EPT was that the parents did not want their children to blame them in the future for not supporting their studies, leading to any potential regret. Jane elaborated:

I don’t care if it is worth it. My stance is … I have done my part. I don’t know how to teach you, so I paid the tuition. Then when my daughter grows up, she can’t grumble that her mother didn’t help her.

Some parents thought the investment in EPT was worthy in any case ‘as long as the children could learn something’ (Samuel). Daisy shared this view:

It is worth it. Because … in this world, if you are not adding value to yourself, and being uncivilised, the job you can get must be with low salary, and it must be a tough one.

The excerpts above illustrate that these parents deemed supporting their children as their obligation. By paying for children’s tuition, they tried to ensure they would not regret.

Discussion

The data analysed above illustrate a rather complex picture of parents’ motives and attitudes regarding their children’s enrolment in EPT courses. By addressing the first research question of motives, the study reveals that, as indicated by all the participants, the hope of optimising children’s future success through English learning can be a reason driving parents to pay the tuition fee. This finding exemplifies a typical context with ‘English fever’ (Chik and Besser 2011; Fish, Parris, and Troilo 2017; Park 2009) where parents believe in the instrumental values of English for their children’s academic, social and economic advancement (Carmel 2019; Wei 2011). Another motive concerning ‘outsourcing’ English learning to EPT reflects parents’ perceived incompetence in teaching their own children and the possible limitations of schooling. This finding agrees with Gupta’s (2020) observation that parents in India send their children to EPT because they are not confident in speaking the target language. Even if parents have high academic qualifications (e.g. Tess and Yasmine), they usually need to work and do not have time to tutor their children. Moreover, many parents in this study expressed some sort of discontent with the quality of English teaching at school, mainly for they demanded the ‘visible pedagogies’ such as examination skills in EPT for their children (Sriprakash, Proctor, and Hu 2016). This ‘outsourcing’ of the teaching of English to EPT and seeking assistance from tutors can be seen as an act of ‘externalised parenting’ (Zhang 2019, p. 28) and supplementing schooling (Doherty and Dooley 2018).

Regarding the second research question of attitudes, what is interesting to note is that, although all the parents were willing to pay for EPT, many held ambivalent and even contradictory attitudes toward the effectiveness of EPT. They doubted whether EPT could enhance their children’s English proficiency given its excessive focus on examination skills. This view from parents agrees with students’ own criticism on EPT as they experience difficulty transferring their learning to daily life for authentic communication (Chung 2013; Yung 2015). Some parents also showed a paradoxical attitude toward the impact of EPT on children’s motivation to learn. Students who cherish the extra learning opportunity for which their parents pay may work harder, but those who rely on tutors to ‘spoon-feed’ them may become less self-motivated (Yung 2020a). On the other hand, while some parents regarded English as a commodity and the tuition paid as an ‘investment’ on their children, they did not necessarily expect returns. This seemingly contradictory attitude of ‘investment’ from the parents’ perspective can be attributed to their views that it was their responsibilities to support their children’s learning, at least financially, and the returns would ultimately depend on how much their children learn in EPT. This epitomises the phenomenon of ‘responsibilising parents’ in a context where edu-business like private tutoring turns parents into consumers of education (Doherty and Dooley 2018, p. 551).

Taken together, the findings unveil the complexity of parentocracy through the parental perspective on EPT within a meritocratic educational context. As noted by most participants, despite their payment for EPT as a parentocratic means to increase their children’s learning opportunities, academic success is still considered fundamentally predicated on children’s own ability and efforts in attaining satisfactory results in standardised examinations. This observation has somewhat problematised the view that current trends of educational privatisation and marketisation have led to a shift away from meritocracy to parentocracy (Barrett DeWiele and Edgerton 2016; Brown 1990). On the contrary, the findings from the parents’ voice in this study seem to resonate with Tan’s (2017, p. 325) speculation that private tutoring ‘has resulted in a co-existence of parentocracy and meritocracy in terms of an equal opportunity to succeed’ in high-stakes examinations. The parents’ supporting rather than dominant role in their children’s education by ‘investing’ in EPT suggests that their wealth and wishes can be considered subordinate to their children’s ability and efforts. Meanwhile, senior secondary students tend to make their own decision to subscribe to EPT, probably because of the pressure of ‘English fever’, the desire for university admission, and the internalisation of their parents’ aspirations (Park 2009; Yung 2019). Under these circumstances, parentocracy can be conceptualised as a subset of meritocracy given that parents’ wealth and wishes are capitalised to strengthen their children’s ability and efforts in the pursuit of academic success.

What adds nuance to the conceptualisation of parentocracy within a meritocratic curriculum is the notion of educational equality. The findings from this study have illustrated that parentocracy is not necessarily a privilege exclusive to wealthy parents in the context of Hong Kong as other scholars have argued (e.g. Barrett DeWiele and Edgerton 2016; Brown 1990), at least based on the parents in this study who perceived the tuition fee as a financial burden. With the development of lecture-style tutoring, private tutoring has become more affordable. When high SES parents can afford extra language learning resources such as English books, extra-curricular activities and foreign domestic helpers for their children (Butler and Le 2018; Chao, Xue, and Xu 2014), lecture-style EPT seems to be a means for less wealthy parents to buy more learning opportunities for their children. Private tutoring can therefore be regarded as a parentocratic means resisting the existing inequalities in mainstream education.

Nevertheless, although lecture-style EPT has become more affordable, its quality may be questionable, as reflected in the parents’ ambivalent and contradictory attitudes toward its effectiveness. In lecture-style EPT, instruction is usually unidirectional and standardised (Yung 2020a). Unlike the more expensive one-to-one or small-group tutoring, lecture-style EPT can hardly offer tutor-tutee interactions or tailor-made teaching and materials to cater for students’ individual needs. Moreover, as some participants criticised, the content in lecture-style EPT tends to be overly examination-oriented without much focus on learners’ communicative competence. Because the quality varies among different forms of tutoring, the problem of educational inequalities engendered by parentocracy still cannot be completely resolved despite the increasing affordability of private tutoring.

Conclusion and implications

To the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to bridge private tutoring and English learning through the ideology of parentocracy. It contributes to the growing body of literature in shadow education and language education from the parental perspective. Its important theoretical contribution is the expansion of parentocracy based on parental beliefs within a context where parents and students suffer from ‘English fever’ and the pressure of high-stakes examinations. By conceptualising parentocracy in a meritocratic curriculum, this study has shed light on the role of parents in supporting their children’s education. In the aspect of English teaching and learning, this study has unveiled possible limitations in the mainstream education system and the quality of schoolteachers, particularly regarding the lack of examination-focus in teaching as identified by some parents in this study. Under this circumstance, it might be necessary for school leaders to reinforce teachers’ professional development in the area of assessment literacy, given the parents’ demands on schoolteachers for increasing their children’s examination success and enhancing their communicative competence in English. More importantly, school principals and policymakers may enhance home-school communication so that schoolteachers and parents can more effectively support students’ learning both inside and outside school. Schoolteachers’ clearer understanding of the pedagogical practices by tutors, whether effective or not, might also enhance the language teaching quality at school. From the policy perspective, while the educational inequalities engendered by parentocracy may be mitigated by the more affordable forms of EPT, the quality of tutoring should be taken into consideration. This offers an implication concerning quality assurance in tutorial schools, such as tutors’ qualifications and teaching effectiveness. The government may also support non-profit organisations in providing quality fee-free supplementary tutoring for families from low SES.

This study has a limitation concerning sampling. Inevitably, extremely wealthy parents could not be recruited because they may have supported their children to study in private or international schools and escape from the meritocratic public education system (Doherty and Dooley 2018). Otherwise, they may hire private tutors for more tailor-made instruction through one-on-one or small group tutoring at a higher fee rather than the cheaper lecture-style one (Yung and Bray 2017). In this regard, parents from a full range of SES were not secured. Still, the parents in this study whose children were at the senior secondary stage enrolled in EPT courses were under-researched yet important stakeholders in shadow education. The findings of this study may inform the educational practices in other similar contexts with high-stakes examinations and ‘English fever’. Future research may compare the motives and attitudes of parents from different SES and explore those whose children subscribe to other modes of tutoring for further conceptualisation of parentocracy in diverse contexts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Attempts were made to ask the participants’ income, occupations and types of housing, but these were considered too sensitive and most of them refused to answer. Then we asked parents and children to evaluate their own SES (e.g. whether they considered the tuition fee was a financial burden).

Appendix:

interview probes for parents

Background

1. Can you briefly talk about the English environment at home? What is your education background?

2. Do you think tutoring has given you financial burden? Is it worth it to pay the tuition fee? Why or why not?

Views on studying English and relationships between schooling and tutoring

1. What expectations do you have on your child? Do you talk to your child about your expectations?

2. How is English important to your child?

3. How do you see English should be taught and learnt?

4. Do you know how your child is doing at school and at tutorial school?

Reasons for and attitudes toward participating in English private tutoring

1. Did you ask your child to participate in private tutoring? Why or why not? (When did you start sending your child to private tutoring?)

2. What do you expect your child will get from private tutoring? Do you think he/she can get these at school?

3. Why do you let him/her choose lecture-style tutoring and video/live classes instead of others? Do you have any opinion on it?

4. What else can you think of which may help me to understand your attitudes toward child’s English learning experience in private tutoring?