Does the Expert-based Collective Advising Mechanism Promote Educational Equity? Experience from China

Abstract

The Expert-based Collective Advising Mechanism (ECAM) was embedded in the open online tutoring project to provide free tutoring for rural students and to help them improve their academic performance, and thus, to solve education inequity. Taking urban and rural students in Tongzhou District of Beijing as the objects, this study gathered data on the tutoring frequency, the durations students received tutoring, the number of teachers who tutored the same student, and the students’ academic performance. The tutoring behavior and academic performance of rural and urban students were compared. The results showed that the ECAM could improve students’ academic performance. Rural and urban students who received tutoring got the same degree of performance appreciation. Finally, gender, school type, and tutoring duration predicted academic performance positively.