As thousands of students sign up for lessons, parents are urged to study schools' credentials

Xu Jia, 21, a junior at the University of International Business and Economics, bought herself a suit over winter vacation because she had to look more mature for her part-time job.

Xu, a major in international trade, was employed by the Miyun county branch of a private tutoring center headquartered in the Haidian district.

The tutoring center made her pretend to be a professional teacher from a public primary school.

"A teacher from the center told me to dress up like a real teacher to enhance my credibility," she said.

"Furthermore, the teacher often bragged how big and famous the center was to parents, but I even couldn't find any information about the center online," Xu said.

She taught Olympic mathematics and physics to five second-graders two hours weekly, and got paid 50 yuan per hour.

"I am knowledgeable enough to teach second-graders, but sometimes I feel I don't have the technique a professional teacher possesses to communicate with these naughty kids and get myself fully understood," she said.

Unqualified teachers, or at least the misrepresentation of their credentials, are among the many pitfalls parents face when choosing from among the hundreds of companies offering tutoring services, say educators.

Yu Liping, vice-president of Jinghan Educational Center, one of the biggest companies providing private tutoring services in Beijing, told METRO that the malpractice is common in the market because the threshold to start a private tutoring business is low and the competition is very severe.

"Some small education centers fabricate teachers' diplomas and educational backgrounds and lower the price to attract students when they can't compete with standard organizations," he said.

About 330 private tutoring schools are available in Beijing, where parents spend about 5 billion yuan annually on such services, according to current market price.

The majority are small ones that rent classrooms of only dozens of square meters to accommodate a few students, said Yu.

Large-scale private tutoring centers with adequate educational resources account for approximately 10 percent of the total number of private educational centers.

The average price for a one-on-one class with a professional private teacher is 100 yuan per hour. It reaches 200 yuan per hour for high school seniors, according to Yu.

"The common way for small private schools to charge more money is that they give up to a 15 percent discount if a student takes more courses with them," he said.

He believes the best way to enhance the quality of education and to regulate the market is to establish internal teacher evaluation and student feedback systems.

External controls, in the form of collaboration among standard private educational centers to introduce a regulation on such companies, should be implemented, Yu said.

The concept of private tutoring is hardly new to Chinese people. Confucius, one of the world's greatest philosophers, was the first man in the history of Chinese education to start a private tutoring school during the Spring and Autumn (770-476 BC) and Warring States (476-221 BC) periods.

But the idea flourished after the late 1970s, when the university entrance exam became the most important part of a student's life and education was regarded as a means to change lives.

Currently, about 100,000 students, about 10 percent of all students from 6 to 18 years old learn with a private tutor in Beijing, said Yu.

A mother of a third-year junior high school student surnamed Guo told

METRO she hired a private tutor with a English diploma to help her daughter prepare for the upcoming high school entrance exam.

"I heard that a teacher would fake his or her educational background to get a job, so I checked her diploma and had a trial class before I hired her," said the mother, who added she was very pleased with the results.

"A private teacher can immediately find the problem students may have with their studies and solve it," Yu said. "It is a very good way to enhance a student's ability."