Shadow education is known as supplementary tutoring courses, which is a metaphor saying that supplementary tutoring is influenced by mainstream education, like mainstream education’s shadow. Shadow education is a worldwide phenomenon now. In Europe, shadow education is increasing. And in some Asian countries, shadow education seems to even exceed mainstream education.

The seriousness of implications caused by shadow education cannot be ignored. The parents and students have to purchase supplementary tutoring. For this reason, the financial expenditure will be a burden for some low-income families. This concerns the equality of educational resources because the higher-income family might provide various quality tutoring chances for their children. And following, educational anxiety and students’ study burden increase with the increase in shadow education attended. Moreover, the salary of being a tutor is higher than being a school teacher, which might cause schoolteacher corruption. They might have a part-time tutoring job and ask students to sign up for their tutoring courses. There are many social problems caused by shadow education. The education policy toward Shadow Education varies according to the different national conditions. Basically, there are four types: supportive policies, such as in Singapore and America, the MOEs provided financial support to students joining extra lessons; regulating types, such as in India, Portugal and Austria, their MOEs regulated schoolteachers being tutors; laissez-faire policy types, such as in the Czech Republic and Japan, which believe that free-market economy competition will regulate shadow education by itself; and the last type is prohibitive policy, such as today’s China.

China had the most extensive shadow education system in the world. However, since 24/07/2021, Chinese shadow education has been facing an enormous change. The Chinese MOE issued Double Reduction policy aims to reduce students’ study and homework burden by banning supplementary institutions from tutoring primary and lower secondary school students. All the supplementary academic institutions were forced to transform into art institutions or nonprofit-seeking academic institutions. Furthermore, the Chinese MOE set up a new department to monitor shadow education.

However, the Chinese education assessment system is still based on academic performance, competitive grades are the main way to get into a quality university. Therefore, the extra tutoring lessons might help students to learn more and be more competitive in school, the demands are here but the “market” is banned. China is not the only one that issued a prohibitive shadow education policy. South Korea and Mauritius had similar banning shadow education policies but were eventually abolished because shadow education was still highly demanded even though there were prohibitive policies. Whether Chinese policy can work well has become the focus.

Nevertheless, recent research typically investigated how the students, parents and schoolteachers felt about the Double Reduction, it showed that they thought Double Reduction helped students reduce their burden and promote mental health, but schoolteachers felt the workload increased. And also the recent research paid attention to how the public understood the policy, which showed that they could understand the policy is for seeking education equality. However, these studies ignored the shadow education providers’ perspectives on how they understand the Policy, How the Policy is implemented in the institutions from their sight.

Therefore, the general purpose of my study is to explore and analyze what has happened and what is happening in Chinese shadow education after Double Reduction from the shadow education providers’ perspective. This is a referenceable experience we can draw upon that how the policy is implemented in the Chinese shadow education sector; where does it work? where are the deficiencies? And enriching the diverse perspectives of the Double Reduction, not only limited to students, parents and the public.

This research used semi-structured interviews with seven Chinese shadow education providers. This study aims to investigate the tutors’ perspectives on Double Reduction. Moreover, Double Reduction mainly prohibits profit-seeking institutions from tutoring primary and Secondary school students’ academic courses. Therefore, based on these, the selection of tutors was based on these few rules: (1) The participant was a tutor at the moment when the Double Reduction policy was issued. (2) The participant tutored or is tutoring academic subjects (Math, English, Chinese, Politics, History, Geography, Chemistry, Biology, and Physics) for school students. The first participate was recruited from a Chinese social application, and then used the snowball sampling mentod, recruited other interviewees. Data Collection There are six parts in the Double Reduction policy considering shadow education: academic lessons; tutoring curfew; tutoring advertisements; tutoring tuition fee; tutoring curriculum; after-school services. Therefore, the semi-structured interview questions were based on the six parts and the interviewees’ answers to extend more questions. The interviews were conducted online and in Chinese. The whole process was recorded with the participants’ permission. Each interview lasts 25-47 min . Data Analysis The thematic analysis method was used here to analyze the text data. The initial data was coded in MAXQDA 10 by six codes: information about academic lessons; Tutoring curfew, tutoring advertisements; tutoring tuition fees; tutoring curriculum; after-school services; parents’ attitude. Through rereading the data and coding content several times, the themes were induced into two: About Tutors themselves, and how the Double Reduction regulations were implemented in institutions.

The results of this study showed that (1) Chinese supplementary institutions are facing many financial issues. (2) But academic tutoring is still existing secretly. Some academic institutions transformed into art institutions because of the Double Reduction, and they still give academic lessons through "mask tutoring," e.g., the course title is diverse culture sharing but the content is secondary school English. (3) Some institutions' tutors are willing to become private tutors, and some tutors have given up their tutoring careers. The participants all thought the policy is too strict for them. In the next step of this topic is to interview different groups, such as institution owners, institution managers, student-parents, students, and schoolteachers. Furthermore, further research direction also can focus on how the private tutor works under the Double Reduction Policy. How to cope with current European shadow education learn from the Chinese experience?

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