Part
01
of one
Part
01
What country invests the most in early childhood language education (such as ESL)?
Hi, and thank you for your question about which country's parents invest the most in early childhood English learning programs! The short answer is that China is the world leader in terms of total expenditure, while Hong Kong and America itself are both areas of additional interest, for reasons I'll get into in the following deep dive of my findings.
In this report:
-Methodology
-Total Private ESL Market
-Digital ESL Product Sales
-Overall Parental Expenditure on Education
-Conclusion
-Calculations
Methodology
Because English language instruction takes a variety of forms--public school, private school, tutoring, conversational instruction, digital products, even through babysitting and nanny services--there exists no single figure for total parental expenditure on early childhood English language education. However, we can look at more specific measures of expenditure to infer which country's parents spend more than other countries' parents; in this report, I will be explaining market values and trends for the total private ESL market, digital ESL product sales, and overall parental expenditure on education.
Total Private ESL Market
The total market for private ESL classes in China was worth $3.1 billion in 2010, with approximately 30,000 companies offering private instruction. (I have found other, more recent publications citing a figure of $4.5 billion for the total English training market, but in attempting to track down the original research, these claims tended to devolve into equivocation, old data, or un-sourced content.)
In addition to the total size of its market, China stands out with regard to your question because its English-learning population is steadily getting younger. Public schools used to start teaching English when students were 12 years old; now they begin at 9, and some in the larger metropolitan areas have started instructing students as young as 6 in English language learning. While no hard data exists on the average age at which parents begin private ESL instruction, the trend in public education is likely reflective of shifts in private instruction.
In fact, a recent survey of Chinese parents about their attitudes towards ESL instruction reveals that 47% of Chinese children were between the ages of 3 and 6 when they were first introduced to English, although this survey did not inquire about whether this was via public or private education. Among preK-12 students taking English instruction, the largest cohort was 3-year-olds, at 16.2%.
Digital ESL Product Sales
Unlike English education broadly, which, as previously stated, takes many forms, many of which aren't explicitly tracked, digital ESL instruction is, by its nature, readily quantified, and the data here is particularly clear in terms of China's position as a global leader. The relevance of digital ESL instruction is particularly acute as the Chinese market, and the global market in general, becomes increasingly competitive and cost-focused; while digital instruction is only expected to increase in the coming years, offline instruction (classroom and print) is projected to shrink in the coming years, despite an overall increase in the size of the ESL instruction market; digital instruction is slated to pick up the slack.
So how big is the digital ESL instruction market? According to research firm Ambient Insight, the global market for digital English language learning products reached $2.8 billion in 2015, with $1.6 billion of these revenues coming from the Asia Pacific region, and $938.6 million of that coming from China. As such, China occupies the spot of top buyer in the Asia Pacific region, followed by S. Korea, Japan, India, and Taiwan. Based on these figures, as well as current estimates of the total Chinese and global population, reveals (see Calculations) that China, at 18.7% of the global population, comprises a disproportionate 33.5% of global digital ESL instruction expenditures.
China is expected to continue to be the top buyer through at least 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of 2.8% projected to put revenues at $1.0 billion by that time.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, America was the second-largest purchaser of digital English language learning products; in fact, the five-year compound annual growth rate for the American market is 8.4%, higher than the global rate of 6.0% and far higher than the overall Asia Pacific rate of 4.6%. (This is due in large part to Hispanic immigration and an overall increase in the American Hispanic population; the American English language learning school population has been estimated to be growing as much as 7 times as rapidly as the total student population in America.)
But how much of this expenditure on digital instruction is indicative of parental investment? As of 2015, the government-operated preK-12 segment was the largest buyer of digital English instruction in the Chinese market; however, the consumer segment, with a growth rate of 8.2%, is expected to outspend the government's preK-12 operation by 2020.
It's worth noting as well here that up until this year, parents whose children were enrolled in private schools were responsible for paying for their children's textbooks; as of 2017, the Chinese government is paying for private school textbooks (as well as those used in public schools, as has been the status quo.) Therefore, the Chinese government is now more or less the sole purchaser of instructional content for schools; nevertheless, the consumer segment's aforementioned 8.2% growth rate is still expected to surpass government spending by 2020.
Overall Parental Expenditure on Education
Finally, one may get an idea of which country's parents spend the most on early childhood ESL instruction if one looks at total educational expenditure by country, and if one looks more closely at the available data, it seems that Hong Kong parents may possibly invest more in early childhood ESL than mainland China. While there are no published figures on precisely how much Hong Kong parents spend on early childhood ESL specifically, total educational expenditures by Hong Kong parents have been tabulated, as of 2017, at an average of $132,161 between grade school and the end of an undergraduate degree; in contrast, the average expenditure by Chinese parents is just $42,892 over that same period. This three-fold difference may well reflect a greater investment in early childhood ESL education, a subset of the overall expenditure.
Conclusion
China is almost certainly the country with the largest investment by parents in early childhood English-language instruction, based on the total size of its private (digital and otherwise) ESL market, and the total size of its digital (public and private) ESL market, as well as current growth trends in both of these areas. The downward shift in the average age at which Chinese children are first introduced to English further supports this assertion. An inferential analysis of the available data suggests that Hong Kong parents may potentially spend substantially more on childhood ESL instruction than mainland China, and the American market for ESL products is probably close behind China's, although this includes public instruction.
Thanks for using Wonder! If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to Ask!
Calculations
Chinese population as percentage of global: 1,388,698,218 / 7,406,906,923 = 0.187
Chinese digital ESL market as percentage of global: 938,600,000 / 2,800,000,000 = 0.335