Forum: Advertising claims by tutors should be regulated
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As another new school year approaches, an avalanche of advertisements offering tuition that caters to all educational levels from primary school to A levels has appeared, mostly in Facebook posts and also in prominently displayed roadside banners.
From these advertisements, it is obvious that tutoring is a big business, and that competition to recruit students is intense. And it seems anyone can become a tutor or start a tutoring business without any specific licensing requirements for qualifications or training.
To grab the attention of anxious parents seeking tutors for their children, these advertisements make claims that those teaching are superior tutors, with some offering free trial lessons or promising results within just three months with “money back” guarantees. To add credibility, some claim to be “MOE-registered”, without any evidence of such registration with the Ministry of Education in the ads.
Several advertisers include incomplete names of tutors with impressive credentials.
It is not easy to verify the authenticity or accuracy of the information contained in these advertisements.
This means that some parents might be misled into sending their children to unqualified or incompetent tutors, resulting in potentially dire consequences of not only wasting their money but also causing their children to receive poor-quality tuition.
Given that outside-of-school tuition is common practice and is here to stay, perhaps the relevant authorities, including the Consumers Association of Singapore, should at least review such advertisements to ensure that they are accurate and do not constitute misleading or false information.
Ang Ah Lay
