The English name is derived from the slang term cramming, meaning to study a large amount of material in a short period of time.
As the name suggests, the aim of a cram school is generally to impart as much information to its students as possible in the shortest period of time.
Most cram schools provide help for admission tests of public universities and medical colleges like BUET, CUET, RUET, KUET, Universities of Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi and Jahangirnagar, medical colleges etc., and public examinations like PSC, JSC, SSC, and HSC.
In recent years, cram schools have also been extended to the tests for government civil services like BCS Examination.
Cram schools are called "Preuniversitarios" in Chile, and are attended by students before taking PTU (University Transition Test) in order to get onto undergraduate studies.
They are related to the phenomenon of buke, which is extra study for the improvement of students’ academic performance in National Higher Education Entrance Examination (commonly known as Gaokao).
But as the population of students decreases each year and admission to domestic universities expands, the pressure of the Entrance Exam has been reducing.
After the baccalauréat, about 5% of the French students attend the selective Classes Préparatoires aux Grandes Écoles (prep school) or CPGE.
For science topics, it consists of an hour-long session where a group of typically 3 students, each on a board, and dealing with a question related to a specific lesson (e.g. a demonstration of a theorem) and/or exercises.
Khôlles on languages (e.g. English) consists in a 30 minutes test: first listening to an audio or studying a newspaper article and summarizing it, and then writing a short essay on the theme.
Written exams are typically 4h-long sets of exercises and problems built around a specific topic (which often can't be fully treated in the given amount of time), and require both reasoning and raw knowledge.
There are three main branches : The tracks and schools are known for their folklore (slang terms, songs and hymns, anecdotes), and often inherited from early 19th-century generations of students.
Many such schools prepare students to crack prestigious national entrance/scholarship exams at the high school level such as JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) Main & Advanced to enter prestigious engineering colleges like the IITs, NEET-UG (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test – Undergraduate level) for entrance into major medical science undergraduate programs and Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) for entering into premier law schools of the country.
Initiatives like the National Level Common Entrance Examination (NLCEE) complement these efforts by organizing scholarship exams and exposure programs, which provide students with career guidance and visits to premier institutions like IITs.
[3] Various such exams are held for entering fields such as scientific research, engineering, medicine, management, accountancy, law and also into India's premier central and state government services organized by UPSC, SSC etc.
At that time, the number of universities was small, but college competition was intensive because almost 95% of students graduated from high school.
In addition, Japan had the highest achievement test scores in the world from the 1980s to 2000, causing the cram school industry to grow.
Many concerned parents choose to send their children to different tuition classes or schedules based on the child's entrance examination subjects.
Correspondingly, the reputation and business of a tuition center often depends on venue, schedule, number of top-scoring clients, and advertizing by word of mouth.
[citation needed] In Pakistan, it has become very common for parents to send their children to such institutions, popularly known as "academies", after school for further private coaching.
Almost any kind of extracurricular academic lesson such as music, art, math, and physics can be termed as such, even if students do not attend these classes specifically in order to pass an examination.
The meritocratic culture, which requires some skills testing for passports to college, graduate school, and even government service, is dominant on Taiwan's policy.
Most of the students in the top universities of Thailand have attended at least one cram class, especially in science-based faculties such as science, engineering, medicine, and pharmacy.
Students, typically after school and on weekends (especially during the last year), are drilled on various aspects of the Higher Education Institutions Examination [tr] (YKS).
[citation needed] Crammers first appeared in Britain after 1855 when the Civil Service Commission created the Administrative class of government employees, selected by examination and interview rather than patronage.
Crammers offered to prepare men of 18 to 25 years old for these examinations, mainly in classics, economics and foreign languages, which would provide entry to civil service or diplomatic careers.
The opening scenes of Benjamin Britten's 1971 television opera Owen Wingrave,[7] and the 1892 novella by Henry James on which it is based, are set in a military crammer; its master plays an important role in both.
[10] A number of businesses, called "tutoring services" or "test preparation centers", are colloquially known as cram schools.
They are used by some GED candidates,[11] and by many third and fourth year students in high schools to prepare for the SAT, ACT, and/or Advanced Placement exams for college admission.
Their curriculum is geared more towards vocabulary drills, problem sets, practicing essay composition, and learning effective test-taking strategies.