評論
打印
Private tuition
私人補習
Premium economy
優質經濟艙
Private education is becoming more egalitarian
民辦教育變得越來越平等
WHEN Charlotte Hobbs decided to teach her 11-year-old pupil about the “imaginary” maths needed to work out the square root of a negative number, she knew it would be a stretch. But her ambition paid off: the girl quickly mastered the concept and now hopes to study maths at university. Most remarkably, Ms Hobbs achieved her feat in a foster home, not a west London Victorian terrace.
當夏洛特·霍布斯決定教她11歲的學生用來計算負數平方根的虛數時，她知道這是一個艱巨的任務。但她的抱負最終得以實現：這個女孩很快掌握了概念并希望在大學學習數學專業。最值得注意的是，霍布斯女士在一個普通的寄養家庭就取得了這樣的成就，而不是在維多利亞式露臺建筑風格的中產家庭里。
Private tuition has long been popular with the rich. A gaggle of London-based firms hire new graduates from Oxford and Cambridge who charge ￡70-￡100 an hour to prepare children for independent-school entrance exams taken at 11 or 13. Yet thanks to ambitious parents and government policies, many more children from lower-income families are being tutored.
私人補習一直受到富人的歡迎。一些總部位于倫敦的公司聘請剛從牛津、劍橋畢業的學生幫助11歲或13歲的孩子準備私立學校入學考試，他們每小時收費70到100英鎊。然而，由于那些望子成龍的父母和政府的政策，更多低收入家庭的孩子也開始補習。
The primary force is the pupil premium, a scheme that channels extra money to schools with poorer pupils. This payment, which is rising from ￡623 ($950) per pupil this year to ￡900 in 2014, has created a market for private tuition in state schools. Ms Hobbs works for Tutor Trust, a not-for-profit organisation which provides one-to-one sessions for ￡18 an hour. The firm’s 220 tutors tend to be students at Manchester University keen to earn some extra cash. Since February 2012 they have taught for more than 10,000 hours in schools across the city. According to figures from Ofsted, the education regulator, two-fifths of schools are using their pupil-premium cash to pay for one-on-one tuition; a third are using it for group tuition. The aim is to improve results and shrink the yawning gap between the academic achievements of poor children and richer ones in England’s schools.
這一現象最主要的動力來自學生獎學金計劃，這個計劃把額外的錢撥給貧困學子。這筆款項將從今年的623英鎊（約合950美元）在2014年漲到900英鎊，這也為在公立學校提供私人補習創造了市場。霍布斯女士為“Tutor Trust”工作，這個非營利組織提供每小時18英鎊的一對一輔導。公司的220名老師大多是曼徹斯特大學想要賺點外快的學生。從2012年2月開始，他們已經在這個城市教授超過10000小時的課程。根據教育主管機構Ofsted的數據，五分之二的學校用學生獎學金支付一對一輔導費用；三分之一用此支付集體輔導費用。這項計劃的目的是要提高教學成果并減少英國學校貧富學生之間學業成績的鴻溝。
But it is not just the hardest-up who are getting private help: parents on ordinary incomes are hiring more tutors, too. Explore Learning, a private-tuition chain, says that many of its customers use government child-care vouchers (which are tax-free) to pay for tuition. Lower earners receiving tax credits can claim back up to 70% of the cost. It helps that franchises such as Kumon, a Japanese firm, lower costs for parents by teaching in groups. These kinds of out-of-hours outfits have long been popular in East Asia: roughly three-quarters of South Korean students attend a hagwon after school.
對于接受私人補習的人來說，補習費不是最大的障礙：工薪階層的父母也聘請很多輔導老師。一個名為Explore Learning的私人連鎖教育機構聲稱他們許多客戶都使用政府托兒券（免稅）來支付學費。中低收入者的稅收抵免能返還70%的費用。一些像日本Kumon這樣的特許公司提供的集體教學也幫家長減少了費用。這種課后補習機構在東亞一直很流行：粗略計算，四分之三的韓國學生放學后都要參加補習班。
This combination of rising subsidies and fiercer competition means that the army of tutors is likely to get bigger. This should be welcome news. The Education Endowment Foundation, a charity, estimates that a year of one-to-one tuition is equivalent to five additional months of schooling. Tutors are particularly valuable for difficult subjects such as maths. The government’s aim—to ensure that more of England’s poorer children reach their potential—is still an aspiration. If its policies break the link between tutoring and income, it may yet become fact.
增加的補貼以及激烈的競爭意味著輔導老師隊伍將會進一步壯大。這將是一個可喜的消息。一個慈善機構—教育捐助基金會估計一年一對一輔導相當于五個月的學校教育。對于像數學一樣十分困難的科目來說，輔導老師就顯得特別有價值。政府的目標是確保更多英國的貧困兒童的潛能得到發掘，但這只是個仍未的抱負。如果政策能打破輔導和收入之間的關聯，這個目標也許能成為現實。譯者：周洋 校對：程麗蓉
