Yeo Leng Leng

Abstract

Education markets all over the world have undergone the process of marketisation. The education market in Singapore is no exception. Since 1990s, a quasi-market has appeared in the public education sector in Singapore. Scholars have identified this tendency in various aspects. However, the similar tendency in the private education sector is yet to be explored. As a preliminary research, this study tries to fill the gap by investigating the job advertisements in the local mainstream Chinese newspaper, Lianhe Zaobao, taking Chinese Language (CL) education as our research focus. In this paper, we distinguish the market in the public education sector as a quasi-market, and that in the private education sector as a free market. However, in the case of CL education, the three major subsectors of the private education sector, namely, tuition industry, private schools and early childhood education, manifested different levels of market freedom. Without involvement in delivery and subsidies from the government, these three subsectors displayed different market activities in supply and demand. Although it is not very clear why this is the case, we will try to offer an exploratory explanation about this question.

Notes :  International Journal of Arts and Sciences, Vol3, pp 212-227, 2010

Keyword(s) :  market, Chinese language education, private education sector, job advertisements