Objectives and Research Questions 

This presentation focuses on a phenomenon of kindergarten admission preparation which is a commercial education market offering training in social skills, mock interview, CV editing and parent consultation. Although this study is contextualized in in Hong Kong, it has wider relevance internationally and in Europe because high competition to get to best schools and accompanying private tutoring market exists almost everywhere. This literature review demonstrated that early tutoring is not an exotic phenomenon and nor is it exclusive to Asia; it exists in USA (Green, 2007) and the UK (Ang,2014).

Through a qualitative study, this paper explores what drives kindergarten admission competition by studying the characteristics of the education market and perspectives from the stakeholders. Two main research questions are addressed: (1) How do parents prepare their children for kindergarten admission? (2) What contributes to the competitive nature of kindergarten admission?

Theoretical framework

Educational outcomes are closely related to early educational experiences (Reynolds et al., 2018; Taggart et al., 2015). Many studies have been done to explain parents’ behaviors in investing on their children’s future from a social, economical and cultural perspective (Brown et al., 2011; Vincent & Maxwell, 2016). Given that kindergarten admission is a highly selective process, parents often turned to the private commercial market and get support from preparation services. Although the concept of private tutoring, also known as shadow education, has been widely studied in the education field (e.g. Bray et al., 2014; Entrich, 2020), early childhood tutoring is an understudied area.

Early tutoring can be considered as a part of the global phenomenon of private tutoring (Bray, 2021; Zhang, 2021). In 2026, it is predicted that the global private tutoring market will reach US$200 billion in value (Global Industry Analysts, 2022). Kindergarten admission preparation services is a form of “early tutoring”.  

Early childhood education is undeniably crucial to child development; yet, scholars questioned whether tutoring young children is developmentally appropriate. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) remarked that being able to play and relax are critical to children. Being tutored at a young age could be problematic since it adds activity-related stress (Brown et al., 2011) and reduces play time (Halpen, 2002). Furthermore, commercialized education services, including kindergarten interview admission services, creates an equity and access issue.

Parents are concerned about their children would be missing out if they do not receive tutoring at a young age. Some parents believe that offering tutoring means “good parenting”. Vincent and Maxwell (2016) coined the term “responsibilization” of parenthood, which refers to parents’ perceived responsibilities as parents are responsible for children’s problems. Take South Korea as an example, early tutoring is a social norm and parents see it as a responsible investment on their children (Woo & Huges, 2015). Although early tutoring is common in the society, scholars tried to understand the impact of early tutoring in the realm of child development and mental health. Early tutoring can be seen as an extra curricular activities that is correlated with school readiness, but it also has a negative correlation with children’s enjoyment of those activities (Chiu & Lau, 2018).  

Using qualitative methods, we conducted 78 semi-structured interviews from June to September 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants included 29 parents, 24 kindergarten teachers, 10 tutors and 15 early childhood scholars from local universities and non-government organizations. The sample also included policy-makers from the Hong Kong Education Bureau. Given the local government’s advice on COVID-19 protocols, participants were offered options to participate the interviews on phone (n=39), on Zoom (n=27) and face-to-face (n=10). In total, 40 interviews were conducted in Cantonese and 38 were conducted in English. We adapted our research plan due to the pandemic, and made methodological modification concerning recruiting research participants, redesigning instruments, streamlining of data collection approaches and optimizing existing data sources. Our approached echoes the AERA theme of pushing traditional modes of collecting and sharing findings in pursuit of truth with consequences. As a team of women researchers, we juggled multiple responsibilities brought by the changing environment in the pandemic. Responsibilities included managing children’s’ online schooling, moving abroad and changing jobs alongside doing this study amid the pandemic. In the process of intensive data collection, we paid special attention to the mental well-being of both researchers and respondents. The audio-recorded interviews served as the main data source of this study and each interview lasted for about 0.5 to 1.5 hour. The recordings of the interviews were transcribed in verbatim and Cantonese transcripts were translated to English by research assistants who were fluent in English and Cantonese. The transcripts were coded using NVivo (release 1.6.1) following the steps of thematic analysis (Nowell et al., 2017). Considering the access of participants due to COVID-19, we also diversified our data sources by including market materials and websites of educational centers to inform our answers to the research questions. We also tried to recruit participants in multiple ways, such as sending standardized recruitment messages via WhatsApp messenger, as well as using hashtag to search for related content and contacting the content creator, who are parents, teachers and tutors. For data validation purposes, we conducted member checking by organizing a webinar and presenting our findings to the research participants. Our participants shared feedback and asked questions to help finalize the conclusions.

This study is one of the first to explore the emerging market for kindergarten admission preparatory services in Hong Kong and internationally. We traced admission-related competition through the eyes of parents, teachers, company tutors, and early childhood educators, finding that there is a fierce competition for limited slots in “good” kindergartens as perceived by parents. First, the findings of this study demonstrated that there are hierarchies among kindergartens within the school system in Hong Kong which favors middle-class families. The kindergarten admission preparation services represent a market that is tailored for benefiting the middle class. It would be crucial to consider fairness and equity by ensuring that good education is accessible to all children despite their socioeconomic background. This study may be particularly helpful for policymakers and advocates who are passionate about improving educational inequalities and the related negative consequences. Our findings signal marketization of education at early childhood age which needs more scholarly attention. By ignoring how the education market is targeting kindergarten admissions and shaping parents’ decisions, beliefs, and perceptions, we risk ignoring the hidden mechanisms of inequalities maintained and perpetuated by education institutions, commercial market, and family practices. This kindergarten rat race is found in many parts of the world and this paper aims to draw both scholarly and policy attention on the level of competition in early childhood. Our study offers new evidence about the relatively new phenomenon on kindergarten admission preparation services and knowing these factors that drive the commercial market on kindergarten admission helps researchers to better understand the impacts of early tutoring when children are further along in their education trajectory.

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