Beijing to set up institution to oversee and supervise city’s after-school centers

Beijing will establish an institution this year to oversee after-school centers, the capital’s Education Commission announced.

It will be the first such institution in China. A special law enforcement team will be set up in every district of the capital to better supervise the centers and strengthen inspections, the commission said.

The names of institutions that do not pass inspections will be made public, according to the commission.

Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute in Beijing, said the move will improve education.

“Many requirements stipulated by the Compulsory Education Law are ignored by local education institutions and it’s hard to track their responsibilities,” he said. “The establishment of certain law enforcement departments will solve those problems.”

Chen Baosheng, minister of education, said on Tuesday that 401,000 institutions nationwide had been assessed during a national campaign targeting unlicensed operators and extracurricular programs that put students under too much pressure, and more than 273,000 were found to have problems.

He added that around 98.9 percent of the problematic institutions had been rectified.

Some after-school institutions have moved their classes online to avoid government inspection, Chen added.

Ni Minjing, deputy director of the Shanghai Education Commission, said that one of the major obstacles to rectifying the problems with after-school training institutions is that there are no special law enforcement teams and a lack of law enforcement rights.

In 2016, the Ministry of Education encouraged municipal and county education departments to improve accountability.

“However, a lack of legislation impeded the performance,” Xiong said.

He also said that public involvement is necessary in conducting inspections to encourage parents to actively participate in finding solutions.

A local regulation regarding administrative enforcement will be submitted to the capital’s top legislature later this year, according to the capital’s Education Commission. The commencement date for the capital’s law enforcement teams has not been settled.