Feature: HK cram schools attract students with style

Angela Yiu (姚婷芝) and Stella Cheng (鄭婉儀) spent weeks meeting with fashion stylists and photographers before deciding on the miniskirts and high heels to wear in their promotion campaign.

They're not models peddling perfume or sports cars. They're English tutors who earn good money helping secondary school students pass Hong Kong's grueling exams to get into college.

"Their long legs are the most beautiful ones in the tutorial industry," said Ken Ng (吳金倫), head of Modern Education, one of the city's biggest tutoring businesses. "This is our selling point."

Sex appeal has become a hot selling point, just as important as teaching ability and knowledge, in Hong Kong's hypercompetitive world of "cram schools" -- or bou zap se in Cantonese.

Attractive teachers are marketed like movie stars. Their schools show them off on billboards, full-page newspaper ads and TV screens in railway stations and on buses.

Some tutors have their own teams of stylists, fashion designers and photographers, Ng said. They also have personal Web sites, where potential students can see their photos and read their online journals.

It's just the latest twist in the competition to grab the business of students caught up in Hong Kong's make-or-break exam culture.

Youngsters take two college exams during their seven years in secondary school, and have to pass both to get into a university.

So hoards of students flock to after-school lectures at tutoring centers.

The Census and Statistics Department says a third of secondary school youngsters sought private tutoring in the 2004-05 school year, spending a total of US$18.9 million a month -- 25 percent more than five years earlier.

Industry pioneers Modern Education and King's Glory have about 10 centers around the city, each offering about 200 lessons a week.

All the companies boast of their ability to give youngsters an edge by predicting what questions will be asked in exams, employing teams of full-time analysts who study patterns from previous exam papers.

With competition growing fierce on that front, the tutorial centers in recent years have increasingly focused on promoting their teachers as trendy icons.

"When our rivals are equally good at predicting the exam questions, we need a new ground to outrun them," Ng said. "And that is the tutor's appearance."

Last summer, Ng hired Yiu, who once won a modeling contest, to teach English along with Cheng, described by Ng as "a gorgeous former lawyer."

Yiu, who has a business degree, said: "Being a model is not a long-term career. I should plan for the future. I know my good appearance has a market."

Indeed, tutoring is one of the most profitable jobs in Hong Kong. Top tutors who have more than 4,000 students can earn high salaries.

Elaine Chow, an advertising executive, said tutoring businesses are applying a "star-making" promotion technique in which tutors dress fashionably and are given nicknames like "the Godfather of Science," "Brand-A tutor" or the "Queen of English."

"In the advertisements, going to tutorial centers is portrayed as a trendy after-school activity more than a chance to acquire knowledge," she said.

Percy Kwok (郭禮賢), a former education researcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who studied the private tutoring phenomenon in 2003, said tutorial centers closely follow the consumption culture of youths to catch their attention.