CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Cram schools: A cultural phenomenon
2.1.2 Attempt of decreasing cram school
expanded from 1,844 in 1999 to 9,344 in 2008 in Taiwan (as cited in Bray & Lykins, 2012, p. 7); (Liu, 2012). Taiwan educational reform faced a controversial situation when the intentions to reduce the attraction of cram schools’ didn’t transpire.
2.1.2 Attempt of decreasing cram school measures to limit the time spent in these centers to reduce childhood stress but also as mentioned in the BBC newspaper, as an attempt to “increase the level of creative thinking” (Meet the tutor kings and queens, 2012). The impact of those policies has somehow only been limited in results as in the same way for Taiwan. Instead, it greatly diversified the possibilities for tutoring. In fact, these reforms helped cram schools’ diversification rather than hindered. Now, cram schools have even allowed students to seek both academic subjects and non-academic subjects as a result (Bray
& Lykins, 2012).
As mentioned previously, the Taiwan education system has for a long time been blamed for wrongdoing in its attempts to reduce cram schooling. By that, Taiwan has shown a more “laissez-faire” attitude (Bray & Kwo, p. 12) compared with the South Korean government, which explains why the reforms haven’t revealed success in action. Bray & Lykins (2012) discuss another interesting fact about why the Taiwan government reforms were aimed to discourage students from attending a cram school.
The authors argue that the Taiwan government tried to reduce narrow and passive learning habits by opening new pathways and diversifying the education system. In fact, the authors discusses the shadow education and private tutoring and argues that they are encouraging such learning habits. Cram schools are a form of private tutoring according to Bray & Lykins, that tends to focus on narrow domains of achievement (Bray & Lykins, 2012). Throughout this argument, the Taiwan government has good reasons to wish to reduce cram schooling, even though its attempts have largely
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demonstrated implicit concerns towards the cram school issue, it can be explained by the fact that cram school teaching methods can encourage narrow and passive learning habits.
Recently, the MOE argued about supplementary education and continuing education as “providing extensive and comprehensive learning opportunities for the general public” (Ministry of Education, 2013/2014 p.9). This statement shows a shift in the authorities’ plans previously trying to reduce cram school attraction to a more
“accepting” attitude towards the cram school industry and its role as offering new learning opportunities for students. The government seems to have accepted cram schools to work in parallel for student’s learning achievement. This suggests that cram schools may offer an attractive environment and set of subjects that guarantees results in students’ academic achievements. As Liu (2011) mentioned, cram schools do help in the academic improvement of school children and cram schooling does have a clear positive influence on students’ academic performance (Liu, p. 7). From that perspective, cram schools are well accepted in the society because they bring greater results.
Taiwan governments’ plans to improve the current educational system through major educational reforms have shown results in considerable increase in school attendance so as in private cram schools. By demonstrating implicitly his concern about reducing cram school attendance, there is no doubt that the Taiwan government hasn’t shown a clear or strong “enough” position towards that issue. As mentioned previously, there is a clear “laissez-faire” attitude by the authorities towards cram schools that has turned into a form of acceptance by default. Finally, we can say that educational reforms have had an unconsidered impact on cram schools’ expansion in Taiwan.
When the subject matter is cram school and its expansion, there is a significant need to show the size of the industry and what it represents.To demonstrate the size of the industry in Taiwan, the study turned to look at previous research on registered buxibans and its attendance to give an overall vision of the phenomenon. According to Zeng (1999), the Taiwan Ministry of Education (MOE) calculated the income of the academic buxiban in 1992 and was equivalent to US$212 million, in comparison with Japan’s market size juku of US$13 million. Recent data showed an increase in
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the number of registered buxibans from 1997 with 3076 establishments (MOE, 2012) and now reports more than 18,929 registered buxibans in 2011 (Courtenay, 2013) which 15,248 focuses on traditional school subjects such as Chinese, English and the Sciences (Bray & Kwo, 2014).
Supplementary tutoring including cram schooling duty takes effectively a large space in the students’ everyday agenda. According to Bray & Lykins’ findings, the educational panel survey in 2001, covered 20,000 high school students and indicated that 72.9 % of grade 7 students were receiving tutoring of an average of 6.5 hours a week (Bray & Lykins’s Box 1, 2012). Chou (2008) affirmed the average high-school student is said to spend half of his day on attending school and cram school. Also, the large majority of students (84 %) enrolled in cram schools are from elementary and junior high schools (Chou, 2014). As we argued in the first part, it is clear that the perception towards tutoring from an early age has shifted to become more than
“accepted,” a normal element of the pupils’ daily school routine.
According to Yi (2013), since the compulsory education was upgraded to junior high level from 1968, cram schools have been highly upgraded to junior high level. Cram schooling in Taiwan is characterized by high attendance rates during junior and senior high school (Yi said there were over 80% of students who have ever attended cram school). The same author argued that around the year 2000, half of junior high students attended cram school, and similarly with a local Taiwanese online newspaper which showed the MOE’s survey results, more than 15 years later in 2016; in average more than half of senior high school students in Taiwan still attend a cram school.
Among the 50%, around 80% came from the most prestigious high schools in Taiwan, which implies that cram schooling is highly oriented toward competition and remains prevalent in the society from early 2000 until nowadays (Focus Taiwan, 2016); (Yi, 2013).
The past thirty years have seen a rapid expansion of testing, exposing students worldwide to tests that are standardized and linked to high-stakes outcomes (Smith, 2016). The nature of testing can be described as the global testing culture, which is argued as shaping education policy, perceptions, and practice and is marked by