Restrictive

A new ruling from the Ministry of Education reaffirms China’s long-standing restrictions on home schooling. Unless parents have special permission for health reasons to pull their kid from school, there’s no way to avoid the country’s nine years of compulsory schooling – or more, in some regions, depending on their level of development. The measure particularly singles out sishu, Confucian-orientated private schools. The term, originally an ancient one for a Confucian academy, has been adopted for private schools targeted at parents unhappy with the often cookie-cutter education system in public schools and looking for an alternative.