In a city where celebrity 'tutor kings' advertise themselves on billboards wearing flashy suits and confident smiles while promising to deliver guaranteed A-grade exam results, one teacher is offering his services for nothing.
Former school principal Chan Hung has opened a free tutoring service for pupils who can't afford to pay for places at the coveted tutoring centres.
The 44-year-old's charity, Principal Chan's Free Tutorial Centre, got government approval in January. He has since paired up 112 primary school pupils from low-income families with volunteer tutors, mostly non-teaching professionals. They study together in public places, such as McDonalds stores, which are close to pupils' homes.
Chan is not looking to mimic the rock star-like tutor kings who focus solely on boosting exam grades. He will also offer summer classes for poor children to learn dancing, drawing and acting at his Ma Tau Wai centre.
'These kids are deprived of the chance to learn the arts. They may have the opportunity in school, but it often requires a fee,' said Chan, who acts in an amateur theatre troupe. 'Better-off children start learning the arts when they are in kindergarten to help them get into a good secondary school later on, so our kids are losing out. A lot of parents tell us they never expected their child would get to learn how to dance. Lessons would have cost HK$1,000 a month outside.'
The driving force behind Chan's centre is to nurture a love for learning - something he considers secondary school pupils are deprived of.
Chan was the founding principal of a direct subsidy scheme secondary school QualiEd College in Tseung Kwan O when it was established in 2003, and previously taught for 10 years in what was then a band-five school in Mei Foo - considered the worst in the 1990s.