As more and more of the elite choose to send their children to schools and universities overseas, often to be immersed in a learning environment that is completely alien to them, Chinese parents are demanding more from the state education system that it can offer. Speaking to AFP, Zhang Qaofeng explained why he took his son out of the state-run system and chose to educate him at home.
“I want my son to receive a style of education which is much more participative, not just the teacher talking while students listen. Most of my son's time is set aside for following his interests, or playing.”
Despite a literacy rate of 99% in China, innovation and original research are the worst performing areas of industry, with knock-offs of western products rife, many parents feel that schools and universities focus too much on exam performance. Several high profiled child abuse scandals widely reported in the Chinese media are also to blame for the rise in home schooled children.
The practice is understandably popular with another demographic - the Christian Chinese who want their kids to have a more "Bible-centered" education that they would be denied in a state school.
Official word on the matter is, as one might expect with such thorny issues entering into the debate such are religion, divided on the matter. Chinese law requires that all children are enrolled in school from the age of seven and be subjected nine gruelling years culminating in the infamous gaokao exam.
Some parents defy the law, Zhang told reporters, the results of his teaching already evident in his eight-year-old Zhang Hongwu, “My son's Chinese and English skills are much higher than other children his age. I plan to teach my son at home until he's ready to attend university. I hope he can attend a great university like Harvard, Oxford or Cambridge, I'm 95 per cent certain he can achieve that.”
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