How much do students benefit from attending private tutorial schools? A case study of the Hong Kong shadow education system

This chapter describes a case study of students attending a fee-paying private supplementary school in order to resit the Hong Kong Year 11 English language public examination. The study reports the students’ grade in the 2009 examination, their anticipated grade in the 2010 examination, and the actual grade obtained in the 2010 examination. While, in their responses, the students hoped for a gain of at least one level on the public examination, they achieved only a gain of a third of a level, on average. While this gain was statistically significant, and does indicate a positive outcome for the cost of a year’s further study, it does not translate into the gains many students had wished for as only one-third achieved the one-level gain in grade they aspired to. The study suggests that schools in the shadow education system may be promising more than they are able to deliver. Copyright © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore.