page_title: Cram schools in Hong Kong
section_title: Business model
hierarchical_section_title: Cram schools in Hong Kong / Business model
caption_attribution_description: English: Advertising billboard for en:King's Glory Education Centre at 601 Nathan Road, Hong Kong
context_page_description: Cram schools in Hong Kong are commercial organisations that cater principally to students preparing for public examinations at secondary school level, namely the Diploma of Secondary Education, and its precursors prior to 2012, Advanced Level and Certificate of Education examinations.
context_section_description: Cram schools are relied upon by some primary school students and many secondary school students to endow them with techniques for public examinations in Hong Kong that determine students' acceptance to local universities. According to the Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong, a third of secondary school students went for private tutoring in the 2004–05 school year, spending a total of HK$18.9 million per month (2.42 million). On the lower estimate, the whole industry is worth more than HK$400 million, and according to other reports, the industry is generating more than US$3.6 billion a year. Amongst these, Modern Education and Beacon College are the only listed operations.
  These establishments cater to the 478 thousand secondary school students in Hong Kong (2008 figures). The schools focus on the two major local public examinations, namely HKDSE and HKALE. Cram schools focus on teaching examination techniques as well as providing students tips on topics which may appear on the coming examination. Monthly tuition fees per subject in 2009 were approximately HK$400 (US$51) for each student. The fee for a course, such as English, can be HK$100 per hour. In 2015, fees were stable at around HK$500, due to tough competition amongst tuition centres and falling school rolls due to demographic factors. The use of video tutorials, pioneered by Kevin Ko, has become a permanent feature in the industry in Hong Kong. Multimedia technology has permitted the leveraging of classes simultaneously to hundreds of students at two or more different locations.
  The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups surveyed 524 year five to year twelve pupils in 2012, 63 per cent of respondents said they were being tutored; approximately 56 per cent of those spent at least HK$1,000 a month on tuition fees. The popularity of tutoring has been fuelled by aggressive social pressures and competition for university places for subjects such as medicine and law.
caption: "Star teachers" featured on a prominent billboard on Nathan Road
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