{"page":"\u003clink rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"https://lessonplanet.com/assets/packs/css/resources-c03aa079.css\" /\u003e\n\u003clink rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"https://lessonplanet.com/assets/packs/css/lp_boclips_stylesheets-517835be.css\" media=\"all\" /\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-title='Celebrity tutors making big money from extracurricular lessons' data-url='/boclips/videos/5c54bc23d8eafeecae12a61a' data-video-url='/boclips/videos/5c54bc23d8eafeecae12a61a' id='bo_player_modal'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='boclips-resource-page modal-dialog panel-container'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='react-notifications-root'\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-header'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-type'\u003e\n\u003ci aria-hidden='true' class='fai fa-regular fa-circle-play'\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\nVideo\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ch1 class='rp-title' id='video-title'\u003e\nCelebrity tutors making big money from extracurricular lessons\n\u003c/h1\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-actions'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='mr-1'\u003e\n\u003ca class=\"btn btn-success\" data-posthog-event=\"Signup: LP Signup Activity\" data-posthog-location=\"body_link_boclips\" data-remote=\"true\" href=\"/subscription/new\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan\u003eGet Free Access\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"\"\u003e for 10 Days\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e!\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-body'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-info'\u003e\n\u003cdiv aria-label='Hide resource details' class='rp-hide-info' role='button' tabindex='0'\u003e\u0026times;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ci aria-label='Expand resource details' class='rp-expand-info fai fa-solid fa-up-right-and-down-left-from-center' role='button' tabindex='0'\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\n\u003ci aria-label='Compress resource details' class='rp-compress-info fai fa-solid fa-down-left-and-up-right-to-center' role='button' tabindex='0'\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-rating'\u003e\n\u003cspan class='resource-pool'\u003e\n\u003cspan class='pool-label'\u003ePublisher:\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003cspan class='pool-name'\u003e\n\u003cspan class='text'\u003e\u003ca data-publisher-id=\"30356011\" href=\"/search?publisher_ids%5B%5D=30356011\"\u003eCurated Video\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-description'\u003e\n\u003cspan class='short-description'\u003e\"Celebrity\" tutors are popular in Hong Kong.There's big money to be made offering extracurricular lessons to parents desperately seeking an edge for their children preparing for the city's intense public entrance exam for university....\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003cspan class='full-description hide'\u003e\"Celebrity\" tutors are popular in Hong Kong.\u003cbr/\u003eThere's big money to be made offering extracurricular lessons to parents desperately seeking an edge for their children preparing for the city's intense public entrance exam for university. \u003cbr/\u003eWhile students in East Asian societies have long relied on so-called \"cram schools,\" Hong Kong has taken them to a new level in recent years. \u003cbr/\u003eThe serious faces staring out from these promotional posters are not movie actors or pop stars... but Hong Kong's latest celebrities... tutors.  \u003cbr/\u003eAcademies use brash marketing, dressing their tutors in miniskirts and high heels or leather jackets to make them look aspirational. \u003cbr/\u003eAdvertisements for these \"tutor kings\" and \"tutor queens,\" as they are known in Cantonese, are splashed on giant roadside billboards, on the sides of shopping malls and on newspaper front pages.\u003cbr/\u003eDesmond Mak, the marketing director of Modern Education says that if a tutor has an attractive appearance it helps to promote their lessons. \u003cbr/\u003e\"For the tutors in the school, all of them are very good in terms of their qualifications. When everything is equal, I think (being) a better-looking will be an edge to them compared to other competitors.\"\u003cbr/\u003eFor most of Tony Chow's students, the advertisements may be the closest they'll ever get to him. \u003cbr/\u003eThe 30-year-old star tutor teaches English grammar to thousands of secondary-school pupils, many of them watching his after-school lessons remotely over a video feed at 14 branches run by Modern Education.  \u003cbr/\u003eChow promises students he can help them ace the all important university entrance exam. \u003cbr/\u003e\"The (government) Education Bureau is trying to promote the message: 'Learning is more than scoring.' True, it's more than scoring, but when it is a game, score is still the factor, the key factor for the universities to choose their candidates to enter their programme. So they still need the tricks to win the game, to win over other candidates, to get into the university. That's a hard fact, I think.\"\u003cbr/\u003eChow and others promise, for example, that they will help students memorise keywords that appear frequently on exams. \u003cbr/\u003eWhile regulations limit classrooms to 45 pupils, cram schools get around this by subdividing the room with a glass wall. \u003cbr/\u003eStill others watched the lesson simultaneously on video at other branches around the city, though the most they saw was a close-up of Chow's hand using a pen to complete English idioms in a workbook while explaining almost exclusively in Cantonese. \u003cbr/\u003eQuestions from students are discouraged. \u003cbr/\u003eFacebook profiles, YouTube videos and other social media are also part of the aggressive marketing tactics. \u003cbr/\u003eChow uses \"WeChat,\" a popular smartphone app to send messages to students. He says the voice messages can help students to master pronunciation and understand tone more clearly.\u003cbr/\u003e\"For that particular software, we can try to record our voice. Because for English, the pronunciation and the tone are also important. By just text, you couldn't see anything. But for voice recording, it's a very important, the functions are very important for us to share with our students the tone and the pronunciation of the words and whole speech. And whenever they have time, they can replay it and replay it, and they can understand the tone and the pronunciation. It's a way for us to teach. It's a new method, I think.\"\u003cbr/\u003eTo many students, the glamorised images of Hong Kong's celebrity tutors has also, paradoxically, made their regular teachers appear less credible. \u003cbr/\u003e\"It's like he has the teaching skills whereas I don't know if my teachers have the same qualification,\" says Amy Wong, a 16-year-old who was one of about 60 pupils taking Chow's class on a recent night at branch in a suburban shopping mall. \u003cbr/\u003eAnother student, 17-year-old Vicky Lin, praises Chow's teaching techniques.  \u003cbr/\u003e\"One of my classmates, she was marginally pass for her writing, but because in Tony's class he teaches like, word collocations (words that often appear together) and we have a variety of vocabularies and improvement in the grammar, so it's like we can express what we want to write more clearly, and the grammar mistakes will be minimised.\"\u003cbr/\u003eHong Kong's tutoring industry is worth two billion Hong Kong dollars (260 million US dollars), according to a report by market research firm Synovate commissioned by Modern Education, which went public in 2011 and is one of a handful dominating the market. \u003cbr/\u003eThe industry has made some tutors extremely wealthy. \u003cbr/\u003eWhile Chow won't say how much he earns, the top performers can be paid many times what a public school teacher makes. \u003cbr/\u003eModern Education's highest paid tutor earns at least 16 million Hong Kong dollars (two million US dollars) a year, according to its parent company's latest annual report. \u003cbr/\u003eThe second highest earned 1.9 million US dollars and third highest made one million US dollars. Their identities were not disclosed. \u003cbr/\u003eThe salary figures may not include marketing costs, which the schools share with the tutors, who work as contractors. \u003cbr/\u003eChow says he spends thousands of dollars printing glossy exercise books he gives free to students. \u003cbr/\u003eWhen the school year began in September, tutor Chow and his employers arranged to have his face plastered on the sides of Hong Kong double decker buses to raise his profile further. \u003cbr/\u003eHe split the cost of the bus ads, which cost HK$15,000 per bus, with Modern Education. \u003cbr/\u003eNearly three quarters of Hong Kong students attend tutorial classes, according to a survey by Hong Kong University's Comparative Education Research Centre. \u003cbr/\u003ePressure is also rising after Hong Kong's education authorities in 2012 reduced the number of university entrance exams to one from two.\u003cbr/\u003eThe move was designed to reduce student anxiety but critics says it had the opposite effect, turning it into a \"make or break\" test. \u003cbr/\u003eGlobal student rankings out last week highlighted the city's cutthroat academic atmosphere. \u003cbr/\u003eHong Kong teens, along with Shanghai, Singapore, South Korea and Japan, dominated the list compiled by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. \u003cbr/\u003eAmerican students showed little improvement and failed to reach the top 20 in maths, science or reading. \u003cbr/\u003eAP Television\u003cbr/\u003eHong Kong - 9 December 2013\u003cbr/\u003e1. Pan wide of tutorial school adverts to front of tutorial school situated inside a shopping mall\u003cbr/\u003e2. Mid of pamphlets in cubbyholes along the wall of tutorial school\u003cbr/\u003e3. Mid of cubbyholes holding pamphlets at Modern Education for celebrity tutor Tony Chow's classes\u003cbr/\u003e4. Wide of tutorial school\u003cbr/\u003e5. Close of tutorial school course timetable\u003cbr/\u003e6. Close of student's hands paying tutorial school fees\u003cbr/\u003e7. Mid of student signing up for tutorial classes\u003cbr/\u003e8. Mid of Desmond Mak, Marketing director of Modern Education walking along wall of celebrity tutors' poster\u003cbr/\u003e9. SOUNDBITE: (English) Desmond Mak, Marketing Director, Modern Education:\u003cbr/\u003e\"For the tutors in the school, all of them is very good in terms of their qualifications. When everything is equal, I think (being) a better-looking will be an edge to them compared to other competitors.\"\u003cbr/\u003e10. Pan right of queue of students at the entrance of the tutorial school\u003cbr/\u003e11. Mid of students walking into tutorial class\u003cbr/\u003e12. Mid of students walking into tutorial class\u003cbr/\u003e13. Close of student's hands and textbooks at class\u003cbr/\u003e14. Wide of Chow walking into classroom\u003cbr/\u003e15. Close of Chow organising textbooks with his face on them before class\u003cbr/\u003e16. SOUNDBITE: (English) Tony Chow, English tutor at Modern Education tutorial school:\u003cbr/\u003e\"The Education Bureau is trying to promote the message: 'Learning is more than scoring.' True, it's more than scoring, but when it is a game, score is still the factor, the key factor for the universities to choose their candidates to enter their programme. So they still need the tricks to win the game, to win over other candidates, to get into the university. That's a hard fact, I think.\"\u003cbr/\u003e17. Close of Chow writing phrases on booklet which is then projected on a screen\u003cbr/\u003e18. Pan right from Chow to classroom during class\u003cbr/\u003e19. Mid of students copying down tips and techniques\u003cbr/\u003e20. Close of student writing\u003cbr/\u003e21. SOUNDBITE: (English) Tony Chow, English tutor at Modern Education tutorial school;\u003cbr/\u003e\"For that particular software, we can try to record our voice. Because for English, the pronunciation and also the tone are also important. By just text, you couldn't see anything. But for voice recording, it's a very important, the functions are very important for us to share with our students the tone and the pronunciation of the words and whole speech. And whenever they have time, they can replay it and replay it, and they can understand the tone and the pronunciation. It's a way for us to teach. It's a new method, I think.\"\u003cbr/\u003e22. Wide of video class, separated by a glass wall with Tony teaching live on the other side\u003cbr/\u003e23. Tilt up close of student taking notes during class\u003cbr/\u003e24. Mid of Chow teaching class\u003cbr/\u003e25. Close-up of Chow teaching class\u003cbr/\u003e26. Close of student taking notes\u003cbr/\u003e27. Close of student Amy Wong, 16, listening during class\u003cbr/\u003e28. Close of Wong's red pencil case\u003cbr/\u003e29. SOUNDBITE: (English) Amy Wong, 16-year old student:\u003cbr/\u003e\"I think he studied in education, stuff like that. It's like, he has the teaching skills, where I don't know if my teachers in school have that same qualification.\"\u003cbr/\u003e30. Close of electronic board reading: (Chinese) \"Now taking applications for secondary six intensive courses. Helps raise your grades, get stars, clear concepts.\" (The writing is in traditional Chinese, the characters are written the same way for both Mandarin and Cantonese)\u003cbr/\u003e31. SOUNDBITE (English) Vicky Lin, 17-year old student:\u003cbr/\u003e\"One of my classmates, she was marginally pass for her writing, but because in Tony's class he teaches like, word collocations (words that often appear together) and we have a variety of vocabularies and improvement in the grammar, so it's like we can express what we want to write more clearly, and the grammar mistakes will be minimised.\"\u003cbr/\u003e32. Pan right of celebrity tutors on advert\u003cbr/\u003e33. Wide of advert showing celebrity tutors\u003cbr/\u003e34. Zoom out of Chow holding a miniature model of a bus with his advert showing him on the side and the back\u003cbr/\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='action-container flex justify-between'\u003e\n\u003cbutton aria-expanded='false' aria-label='Read more description' class='rp-full-description' type='button'\u003e\n\u003ci class='fai fa-solid fa-align-left'\u003e\u003c/i\u003e\n\u003cspan id='read_more'\u003eRead More\u003c/span\u003e\n\u003c/button\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-report'\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv aria-labelledby='resource-details-heading' class='rp-info-section'\u003e\n\u003ch2 class='title' id='resource-details-heading'\u003eResource Details\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='rp-resource-details clearfix'\u003e\n\u003cdiv class='detail'\u003e\n\u003cdl\u003e\n\u003cdt\u003eCurator Rating\u003c/dt\u003e\n\u003cdd\u003e\u003cspan class=\"star-rating\" aria-label=\"3.5 out of 5 stars\" role=\"img\"\u003e\u003ci class=\"fa-solid 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