NSS liberal studies mass tutoring in Hong Kong: the experience of senior secondary students

Abstract

Liberal Studies was introduced to the Hong Kong Senior Secondary Curriculum as a compulsory subject in 2009. Liberal Studies lays strong emphasis on students’ self-learning abilities and critical thinking skills, and reduces rote memorization or cramming of knowledge. However, the large-scale tutorial schools – also known as cram schools - which are notorious for teaching students to focus on examination materials instead of genuine learning have ironically been successful in attracting student-consumers for the subject.

This dissertation describes elements students receive from tutorial schools and reasons why the elements can successfully retain student-customers, followed by a discussion on the possible impacts of tutorial school learning which may have on students’ learning and on their formal schooling. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is employed in the analysis.

It is found that tutorial business have made use of a lot marketing strategies for the promotion. Not only that they employ a lot of tactics to satisfy students’ needs, but they also create and stimulate demand by boosting students’ anxiety levels and by devaluing the day school education that they are receiving.

On one hand, the extent to which the so-called ‘examination techniques’ or ‘skills’ is useful to students’ learning is doubted; on the other hand, it is found that tutorial schools’ unethical business practices and their business-driven ways of teaching would impose hidden yet serious long-term impacts on students’ learning and whole-person development. Moreover, tutorial schools’ marketing strategies would hinder the education reform which is in progress.

All in all, tutorial school’s hindrance to successful schooling deserves immediate attention from educational policy makers.