Asian Australian students' success is often maligned – but it's our education system that's unequal

A lot of my childhood and adolescent years revolved around tutoring. French lessons on Thursday. English on Friday. Maths on Saturday. Not to mention the piano classes on Monday, or Vietnamese school on Sunday. Tutoring wasn't about needing the extra help, or from falling behind in class. It was about getting ahead - doing year 10 Maths in year 8, or analysing poetry years before year 11 English demanded it. As an adult, I often look back and reflect on those years and think - what was it all for? Plainly, the drive was all about the opportunity: to get the highest possible mark so I could get the highest possible ATAR, which would allow me to pursue whatever I wanted at university.

However, tutoring has often been criticised. Not only for the fact that it is has been described as tantamount to cheating, but also for the fact that it manifests as an expression of 'tiger parenting', where strenuous tutoring can adversely impact the well-being of children.

Yet, I think the tiger parenting criticism can be superficial. Granted, there are valid concerns about excessive tutoring and I certainly don’t vouch for the necessity of this. However, these criticisms often gloss over the deep-rooted drive behind Asian migrants' approach to education: to overcome the social anxiety in an unequal society, where education is understood as the recourse to upwards social mobility.

The bootstrap mentality, coupled with the fact that most immigrants lack local knowledge and networks of locals, is often the driving force behind Asian migrants' push for tutoring. In a white-dominated society, Asian parents view education as an 'insurance policy.' So, when we read that "Asian migrants don’t have the luxury to just let their kids play after school", is it that surprising then?

- Isabella