Supplementary education gains currency with parents
When instruction ends for the day at his first school, Nicholas Waterhouse-Currie can hardly wait for it to begin at his second.
The six- year- old is a full- time student at Pacific Rim Montessori Academy on Vancouver’s west side during regular school hours five days a week, and a part- time learner at the new Pear Tree education centre on Broadway Avenue. He attends after- school classes twice a week and, according to his mother, is always enthusiastic.
“He loves it,” Maryanne WaterhouseCurrie said as she delivered her son for a class in late May. “He gets hands- on learning — he gets to do stuff rather than just watch,” she added as Nicholas raced into the classroom where students were donning gloves before dissecting a squid.
Pear Tree, which opened in March, advertises its program as a solution to the “crisis” in the education system. “Current educational methods do not meet the needs of either the economy or the children they serve,” its website states. “Children leave school and university lacking the skills they need to be successful and contribute to the growth of Canada’s economy.
“Pear Tree Education will be the first company in Vancouver to provide a solution to this crisis.”
While Pear Tree is unusual in Vancouver, it’s part of a worldwide, growing supplementary- education business that includes private tutors, small schools and large corporations such as the Kumon after- school math and reading program. Supplementary education appeals not only to parents with children who are failing, but also those who have simply lost confidence in traditional schools or who want to give their offspring an edge in a highly competitive world.
This trend, while nascent in B. C., deserves attention from educators and policy- makers, especially as B. C. embarks on school reforms intended to promote what’s known as 21st- century learning, says Julian Dierkes, assistant professor at the Centre for Japanese Research at the University of B. C.
Dierkes, described recently by The Economist as a rare expert on Japanese supplemental schools called jukus, has examined what happened in that country after changes in 2002 that were similar to what B. C. is now contemplating — a reduction in curriculum, an emphasis on project learning and a shift from common teachings to personalized learning.
The reasons for the changes were not well explained, and parents balked. “It was an unmitigated policy disaster,” Dierkes said. “It led to huge growth in supplementary education and a widespread parental perception that academic achievement was declining.”
That perception applied to both public and private schools, even though it was not clear that quality had deteriorated.
“To the extent that standardized tests tell us anything, Japan is doing quite well,” Dierkes said. Nevertheless, the education business flourished, and Japan now has 50,000 jukus. It’s not unusual to find in some senior high school classes that 100 per cent of students also attend jukus.
Supplementary education is also popular in South Korea, China and Taiwan, and Dierkes noted interest has crossed the Pacific with immigrant families who have traditional expectations about what children should learn at school. When those expectations are unfulfilled, they turn to supplementary education.
During a study five years ago, Dierkes identified 74 juku- like schools in Metro Vancouver, of which barely half were English only. Numbers have climbed since then and there’s an abundance of schools offering Asianlanguage instruction, especially in math, he said.
“I can drive through Kerrisdale and point to awnings on every other block. There are tons,” he said. “My hunch is that a fair number of them are aimed at Taiwanese immigrants because they use traditional Chinese characters.”
That might be different in Richmond, where there are more mainland Chinese immigrants, he added.
Joyce Tang, director of North Vancouver’s Sylvan Learning centre, echoed the view that the growth in supplementary education is largely because of demand from Asian families. “It’s cultural,” she said.
Generally speaking, Asian parents place high value on marks and experience “culture shock” when their children enter B. C. elementary schools and discover there are only two standardized tests, in grades 4 and 7, Tang said.
Expansion of supplementary education can have far- reaching ramifications, Dierkes said, with businesses gaining political influence as they enrol more and more students. Since such educational centres are not regulated by the Education Ministry, anyone can hang out a shingle.
But those concerns weren’t on the minds of Leslie Fulton and Wilson Tang as they waited in Pear Tree’s brightly decorated reception area for their twin boys, Cooper and Ronan, to finish dissecting their squid. They said they are delighted to have found an after- school activity that stimulates their five- yearold sons’ brains beyond what they’re learning at Maple Grove public school.