The number of schoolchildren who use tutors has almost doubled since 1996, a survey has found, with 15 per cent paying more than HK$1,500 a month for the services.
The Federation of Youth Groups interviewed 521 pupils from Primary Five to Form Seven last month, and 56.7 per cent said they had taken tutorial classes in the previous six months. In a similar poll 13 years ago, of the 507 pupils questioned 34 per cent had joined programmes at tutorial schools.
Of the pupils in the recent survey who took extra classes, just under 70 per cent said they took English lessons. The next most popular subject was maths, at 47.6 per cent.
More than 60 per cent of pupils who took tutorial lessons said they attended classes at private schools, while 34 per cent said they hired private tutors. The pupils on average spent 3.06 hours a day on extra study.
Twenty per cent of the respondents spent between HK$1,000 and HK$1,500 on tutorial classes every month, while 14.4 per cent said their monthly expense on the lessons exceeded HK$1,500.
In the 1996 study, those figures were 10.9 per cent and 8.2 per cent, respectively.
