Low sense of burden

While Liu believes spending 30.1 percent of the family income on education is too high, the survey conducted by her institute also shows that 78.7 percent of the parents think this cost is justified.

"According to the traditional psychology, the central task for a family is to ensure a promising future for the children. Many parents believe that investing heavily in education is a good way in this regard," said Liu.

She noted that under the current family planning system that most families have only one child, parents make their child's upbringing the family focus. "That's why the parents do not feel the burden, even though the heavy [financial] burden is there," said Liu. Parents pay so much attention to their only children and they don't want to risk their children's future, she added.

Wang, Li Tianyi's mother, agrees. "I just provide my daughter with as many opportunities as I can now. So long as she can grasp one opportunity in the future, the payment is worthwhile," she said.

Vicious circle

According to Liu, most parents know that it is not good to limit children's playtime in favor of all these training classes. "But when they see other children attending various training classes, they just could not help but to follow," said Liu. She noted that Chinese parents want to arrange every aspect of their children's lives, so that they can attend the best school possible and eventually get a good job.

But the direct result of this arrangement is that some children just go on following their parents' wishes, and they don't have the time or the ability to make decisions by themselves even when they are grown up. "This is what we do not want to see," said Liu.

Liu attributed the reason for the rising expenditures on children's after-school lessons to the fact that the education resources in China are not equitable. "Take Beijing for instance. We have good schools with good teachers and high reputations among the citizens; we also have primary schools that are not so good; so, the education for students in different schools is not on the same level," said Liu. "Thus, it is natural for some parents to seek after-school training classes to make up the quality gaps among different schools."

To solve the problem, Liu suggested the government should first take measures to balance education resources in different schools. In this regard, the government has taken some measures, such as encouraging teachers to teach in different schools and providing free education for normal universities students to foster more high-level teachers. "But there will be a long and complicated process before the education resources can be balanced," said Liu.

Liu also called for the parents to change their mindsets of educating their children and understand that going to good universities is not the only way for children as different children should have different ways of growth, she said.