Kids and parents interact with a smart robot during the First International STEM Science Festival held in July 2016 in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. (Photo/China Daily)
"For them to get a job in the future it's almost like any literacy skill or language skill it's going to become a basic need that they need to learn," said Yeung. "We need to prepare these kids for jobs that don't exist yet."
Beijing is testing the benefit of giving parents annual subsidies of about $60 per child to help fund programs to nurture their children's creativity. The money doesn't go far though, as lessons can cost as much as $50 an hour in the national capital, Wen said.
Costs may continue to climb, based on trends in Singapore, where the value of a STEM-focused education has been recognized for years. The city-state this month topped a global education survey by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on science, reading, maths and collaborative problem-solving.
Ana Ow said she paid about $300 for five robotics lessons for her 8-year-old son-the cheapest tuition she could find in Singapore.
"I count myself as a 'tiger mom' and I have worse ones among my peers," said Ow, who began sending her son to robotics and coding holiday camps three years ago. "I'm very well aware that digital innovation is the new frontier."
The sentiment is shared by parents around the globe. US President Barack Obama pledged $4 billion in January to aid computer science in schools. There were 1.02 million software developer jobs in the US in 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which estimates that number will jump 22 percent by 2022, spurred by "a large increase in the demand for computer software."
Hangzhou mother Zhuo said getting her son to compete in contests has been one of the better ways to evaluate and encourage his learning.
"He showed a real interest in robotics, so we told him, 'why not figure out where you stand via some tournaments?'" said Zhuo, 37. "Because competition comes with pressure, it really forced him to think whether he wanted to devote more time to it."
She had no expectations at the beginning, she said. Her son started putting in hours after school to complete tasks, and became increasingly keen to apply what he learned in class to his robotics projects.
That helped him work better with others, and his team finished fourth in an Intel Corp-backed RoboRave competition, which necessitated a $7,300 trip to the US, Zhuo said. The event that started in 2001 has attracted students from Mexico to Germany to India to participate.
A competitive focus isn't always healthy, cautioned Reynold Ren, who has taught coding to more than 1,400 students in Beijing this year and said he's been approached by some institutions to help them win at all costs.
"This should be all based on interest, not some unhealthy way for students to improve their chances of getting into better schools," said Ren, whose startup is in the process of creating $29 robots to enable more families to buy them for educational purposes.
