We've Spent HK$180,000 on Maths Tutoring. Was It Worth It?

I am going to do the thing I do at work to education decisions, which my husband says is a character flaw and which I maintain is just rigorous thinking. I'm going to run the numbers.

We have spent, over three years of primary maths tutoring for my son, approximately HK$180,000. I know that number exactly because I track it in a spreadsheet, which tells you a lot about me and also, perhaps, about why my husband finds me tiring.

Here is the breakdown, because I promised myself this blog would be honest even when honest is embarrassing:

Year 1 (P3): Individual tutor, twice a week, HK$450/hour, 40 weeks. Total: HK$36,000. Reason for starting: end-of-year exam results dropped from 78% to 63%. Panic level: moderate.

Year 2 (P4): Upgraded to a more senior tutor at a tutorial centre after the individual tutor emigrated. HK$600/hour, twice weekly, 40 weeks. Total: HK$48,000. Switched to a different centre mid-year when the first one felt like it was teaching to worksheets rather than understanding. Additional switching cost: HK$3,200 in registration fees I couldn't get back. Total Year 2: HK$51,200.

Year 3 (P5–P6 bridge): Current arrangement. Same tutor from new centre, now also includes exam prep sessions in exam months (an extra session per week). Base cost: HK$52,000 annually. Exam month top-up: roughly HK$7,200 across two exam periods. Running total for the year: HK$59,200. Grand total across three years: approximately HK$146,400, plus incidentals (workbooks, past papers, supplementary materials): roughly HK$34,000. Call it HK$180,000.

Now: what did we get for that?

In measurable terms: his maths grade went from 63% in P3 to a current average of 81% in P5. That is an 18 percentage point improvement over three years. By any academic measure, it worked. He went from struggling with P3 curriculum to handling P5 comfortably. His teacher noted in the last report that he shows "good mathematical confidence."

But here is where my finance brain starts asking uncomfortable questions, because ROI analysis is only useful if you're honest about what you're measuring.

What the tutoring bought: Grade improvement, yes. Also: someone else managing the nightly maths homework tension (enormous value, genuinely). A child who no longer cries about maths (see my other articles on this, but trust me, this was not always the case). A structured weekly routine that removed the "when are we doing maths?" negotiation from our household.

What the tutoring did not buy: Independence. This is the thing I wasn't expecting to feel uncomfortable about. My son is good at maths when he is tutored. I am not yet confident that he is good at maths when he is alone with a problem he's never seen before. The tutoring has been, I think, very good at teaching him to execute. Less good at teaching him to figure things out. That distinction matters more at secondary level, and I am aware we are heading there.

What I would do differently: I started too reactively. We started tutoring because of a bad exam result — panic-hiring rather than strategic investment. If I were doing it again, I would have had one session a week consistently from P2 onwards rather than two sessions a week from P3 as an emergency intervention. Half the sessions, half the cost, potentially more effective because less crammed.

I also overpaid for centre prestige early on. The famous-name tutorial centres charge a premium that, in my experience, did not translate to proportionally better outcomes. The second, less famous centre — where my son has stayed — produces better results at lower cost because the tutor-to-student ratio is smaller and his specific tutor happens to understand how his brain works.

The honest answer to "was it worth it" is: yes and no, in a ratio that depends on what you count. The grade improvement was real. The peace in our household was worth something I can't put a number on, though I've tried. The dependency it may have created is a problem I'm now actively trying to solve by reducing sessions from two per week to one as he approaches P6 final exams — counterintuitive, I know, but he needs to develop the muscles he won't develop if someone is always there to catch him.

HK$180,000 is a university semester. It is a family holiday every year for a decade. I don't regret it, exactly. But I want to be clear-eyed about what it bought and what it didn't, because I think a lot of Hong Kong parents spend this kind of money on tutoring and never really audit the results. We convince ourselves the investment is working because stopping feels like giving up.

Run the numbers. Be honest about what changed and what didn't. The spreadsheet is uncomfortable. Do it anyway.