China is forcing after-school tutoring companies to register as non-profits and banning classes on weekends and holidays, according to government documents published by state media on Saturday.
The new rules, aimed at ease pressure on children, parents and teachers, are a major blow to the country’s multi-billion-dollar private education industry.
Chinese authorities will stop approving new after-school educational institutions and all existing organisations must now be registered as non-profits, according to the document published by CCTV and authored by China’s State Council and the Communist Party’s Central Committee.
No weekend classes
These institutions will also be barred from giving classes on weekends, public holidays and school vacations.
Chinese schoolchildren have a notoriously large amount of homework, which can often keep them up late into the night, as parents fight to give their children a leg up in an intensely competitive and exam-centric education system.
That has spawned a massive private tutoring industry, which was worth $260 billion in 2018, according to L.E.K. Consulting.
