Authorities in Beijing will institute an upper limit on fees for after-school tutoring in an attempt to guarantee equal access to school curriculum-based tutoring, as part of attempts to expand the restructuring of the private education sector, reports Caixin. The Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform announced that after-school classes, both online and offline, will be subject to a government pricing guide that sets benchmark and floating fees, with prices capped at 10% over the benchmark.
The pricing guide means that the city’s development and reform departments and education administrative departments would set a benchmark price for offline classes with 10 to 35 students, while pricing for the other types of classes would be calculated using a yet to be defined “price ratio.”
The announcement came not long before the year-end deadline for after-school institutions to register as nonprofit entities in order to gain government permits, as required by the central government’s sweeping “double reduction” policy issued in July.