On July 20th, CERC held its seminar titled: “The Tutoring Industry in Hong Kong: Changes, Threats, and Opportunities.” The seminar featured Richard Eng, Co-founder and Academic Director of Beacon College, a tutorial company in Hong Kong, as the guest speaker. The seminar also joined by two distinguished discussants: Mark Bray, UNESCO Chair Professor at HKU, and Zhang Wei, Executive Director for the Centre for International Research in Supplementary Tutoring (CIRIST) at ECNU. The seminar is chaired by Nutsa Kobakhidze, Director of CERC, and attended by 60 attendees from CERC members.

This seminar began with a brief introduction to the education system in Hong Kong in the 1980s, followed by the speaker’s discovery of a niche market for tutorial schools at that time. The seminar also described the growth of the speaker’s business from its humble beginnings 30 years ago to a publicly listed company in 2018. At the end of the seminar, the speaker shared his views on the future of the tutoring industry in Hong Kong, as well as the outlook for operating tutorial schools in mainland China in the face of the ‘Double Reduction policy’.