Tutoring centre’s founder defends kindergarten interview ad campaign that went viral

The co-founder of a controversial tutoring centre whose training classes for kindergarten interviews have been criticised for putting pressure on toddlers says the classes are only trying to help working parents without making the children's lives "any more miserable than they already are".

The Ever Learning centre was criticised after a photograph of one of its advertising posters went viral online. The poster features a little girl crying and a slogan "You don't like competition? But competition will find you!"

The poster advertises kindergarten-interview training classes for children as young as 18 months and training for primary-school interviews for kindergarten-age children.

"Sign up immediately and let your child become the king of interviews!" the poster says.

In an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post, Amanda Tann, who co-founded the centre with her late husband, well-known English-language tutor Jackie Lai Man-yip, said her detractors had been interpreting the poster wrongly.

She said the image of the crying little girl was meant to show the pressure a child faced in the current system, where hundreds or even thousands of children compete for no more than 200 kindergarten or primary school places.

She said her classes were not trying to overly stress children but aimed to teach them social skills and manners - qualities she said many kindergarten principals she knew appreciated - through playing and bonding with their parents. The centre would only accept children whose parents were also committed to attending the classes, she said.