Addicted to being a nerd more like. A couple in Chongqing say their daughter is ‘addicted’ to studying with private tutors, Xinhua reports.

Lu Yalei told the Chongqing Times that her daughter had resorted to hunger strikes and handing in blank exam papers to protest her parents’ unwillingness to continue paying for after school tutors.

‘Jiaqi’ (a pseudonym) claims to have made great progress in her studies with the help of private tutors (which is, you know, kind of the point) and feels "flustered" if she does not take extra lessons.

Private tutoring is big business in China, in the five years before 2012, family expenditure on education rose 93 percent. Nine out of 10 middle class kids attend at least one fee-paying after school class.

The prevalence of after school tutoring creates pressure on parents and students to pay for more and more in order to give their child an edge. This is in what is already one of the most stressful educational systems in the world.

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