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News on China’s Education Sector

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Learning to sell

New Oriental pivots to ‘educational’ e-commerce
Jun 17, 2022 (WiC 589)

I am Dong Yuhui. I am the son of a farmer. I was a teacher. Now I am a salesman.” This is how Dong introduces himself during his sales sessions on video platform Douyin. His profile sounds like that of an uninspiring teacher who’s trying ...

Very testing times

College entrance exam battles lockdown issues
Jun 10, 2022 (WiC 588)

Sitting the gaokao, China’s annual college entrance exam, is stressful at the best of times. Anxious parents gather outside the examination venues as the police redirect traffic in a bid to create silence for the ...

Textbook case sparks furore

Illustrations raise parental ire in school maths book
Jun 10, 2022 (WiC 588)

Normally students don’t get excited about maths books because they are dry, numbers-filled tomes that do little to inspire those who aren’t mathematically inclined. Not so in China where a widely-used maths textbook has triggered a ...

Education divide

Is China’s education sector also decoupling from the West?
May 20, 2022 (WiC 585)

College rankings are notoriously controversial. Most of the data that compilers use to calculate the rankings is self-reported, such as the amounts of money a school raises and spends. There is also little monitoring of the accuracy of the ...

Exhausted parents offered ‘studycation’ packages
Apr 1, 2022 (WiC 579)

As Shanghai grapples with its worst outbreak of Covid-19 yet, reporting 3,500 newly transmitted cases on Monday, the government is splitting the city into two. Residents of Pudong went into a four-day lockdown starting on Monday. People in ...

New Oriental pivots to agricultural e-commerce
Nov 19, 2021 (WiC 564)

During a public event in 2016, two of China’s most outspoken businessmen challenged each other on a stage. “I am sure Alibaba will still be around in 10 years. But I am not so sure about 100 years,” warned Yu Minhong, founder of the ...

New education law lessens student workloads
Oct 29, 2021 (WiC 561)

What do extracurricular tutoring and warm coats have in common? Not very much in normal circumstances. But under Beijing’s new ‘Double Reduction’ policy – which slashed homework and banned extra tuition in academic subjects taught in ...

Language barrier

New signs that English has hit its peak in China?
Aug 27, 2021 (WiC 553)

Children at schools across China will be pleased that policymakers are asking head teachers to cut back on their homework. Mandatory study of ‘Xi Jinping Thought’, starting in primary school, might be less cause for celebration. But the ...

Why edtechs are pivoting from pupils to parents
Aug 20, 2021 (WiC 552)

In the TV show A Little Dilemma, a series about the downsides of tiger parenting that went viral in China in April (see WiC537), a father decides to attend tutoring classes every day after work so he can help to teach his fifth-grade ...

An education for investors

What is really behind Beijing’s internet sector crackdown?
Jul 30, 2021 (WiC 551)

Angela Merkel has visited China no fewer than 12 times since becoming German chancellor in 2005. Ties between the two nations’ economies are tight and the Chinese have sometimes seemed to taken lessons from the German experience, never more so ...

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