It's summer — time to study?
18 Mar 2015 at 06:00 673 viewed0 comments
NEWSPAPER SECTION: LIFE | WRITER: KANOKPORN CHANASONGKRAM
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It's the big summer school break, supposedly relaxing rush hour traffic until the new academic year begins in midMay.
School is not yet out for many youngsters, particularly those preparing for university, as they join the masses flocking
to tutoring schools.
Needless to say, tutoring costs have become a financial burden for many parents, who want to give their children the
best education and opportunities in life.
I'm not a parent (luckily, perhaps), but close friends have relayed to me the pressure in keeping up with other
households, spending Saturdays and Sundays taking their kids to tutoring schools, instead of spending time with one
another.
Taking tutorial classes is a must, says a best friend, a dentist in Ang Thong, around 100km from Bangkok.
Her daughter had to commute from the central province to Siam Square in a shuttle van on weekends to join kids from
Bangkok and elsewhere at a popular tutoring centre.
My friend's daughter had to endure such travelling because her mother believed that the tutoring increased her chances
of placement in a top Bangkok high school, which the daughter ended up not being able to attend.
The next step was to get into the country's leading university, requiring more tutoring classes that paid off with a seat
in a Bangkok medical school. The investment in tutorials came with a tradeoff: time taken away from the teenager's
life, which she could have used to relax and enjoy her weekends and school breaks.
I still wonder, with enough intelligence and due diligence, if the daughter might have been admitted to medical school
without the excessive tutoring.
Normal schooling is not enough, agreed another friend of mine, who attributes his children's success in becoming
veterinary and decorative arts students from their time in tutorial centres.
If parents of an older generation have this perception, what can be expected from the younger ones, who may skip
regular classes, thinking that they can obtain shortcut techniques from tutors?
This is occurring in the country's top public high school, according to a pharmacist friend, who told me her daughter's
teacher became upset with students who were missing classes because they think that tutors better help them in
furthering their academic achievements.22/3/2558 It's summer — time to study? | Bangkok Post: opinion
http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/499991/itsummertimetostudy 3/8
The tutoring business has long been a part of the education system.
But the boom is driven by a demand from students under a centralised university admission system, which is based on
university entrance exam scores and high school GPAs, as well as ONet (Ordinary National Education Test), GAT
(General Aptitude Test) and PAT (Professional Aptitude Test) scores.
This system is said to offer a concrete and objective approach to measure and compare applicants to ensure equality in
higher education for students of a lower socioeconomic status (who ironically don't have the money for any tutoring).
Their parents may already have to apply for a loan to pay for their children's school. Supplementary tutoring is, in all
probability, completely out of the question.
I don't have children, so I may not need to care much about the confusing admission system, tutorial taxation or
education reform, but the competitiveness facing children does bother me.
Shouldn't kids be engaging in other recreational activities this summer rather than spending time at a crowded cram
school? That should be up to the children themselves to answer.
Kanokporn Chanasongkram is a writer for the Life section of the Bangkok Post.