The price of education

So I finally discovered this week how much it costs to send a pupil to the school I teach at; it's only taken me five months! I ended up ambushing a pupil with the question and she seemed pretty unwilling to answer - perk of being a teacher, you have to answer my questions! Her unwillingness to talk about money surprised me because i've lost count of the amount of times strangers have asked me how much I earn, maybe it's not the done thing to talk about your parents' money.

So to send your child to Nanhai Experimental High School, a school which seems to have a very good reputation - i've been told it's the best in Foshan - it will cost you ¥10,000元 (£1000) a year. In China 10,000元 is a lot of money - it's double my monthly salary here. Saying that though, the pupils in my school either have very rich parents (I should be jealous of all the exotic holidays they go on) or are at the school on on a scholarship, but even they aren't poor in comparison.

only pays for your daily education and your sleeping accommodation. If the students want to eat, have a hot shower, go to the school nurse, use the swimming pool t, have all the seemingly endless items of school uniform, their parents have to fork out extra for that as well.

Sadly after paying all this money, the students safety isn't even guaranteed. Last week one of the many security guards on the school campus, who (I think) are supposed to act like house parents and look after the pupils came back to the school drunk and proceeded to beat up one of the male pupils - to say I was shocked to hear this is an understatement. It seems that if the pupils were weary of the guards before there is very little trust left now - this is the vibe I have been getting from my students in their English exams recently when they talk about school.

The food is also endlessly slated by the pupils, in one of today's exams, two students were talking about what the school had said about the school, it went something like this:

Student A: "When we asked the school to improve the food they told us that the food is very cheap so we can't complain if it is bad. They told us if we want better food we have to go to a restaurant but we will have to pay more".
Student B: "Yes but if we go to a restaurant all the time we will end up like a pauper".

The jury is still out on how I feel about the use of the word 'pauper' in this sentence....

G x