Rural: English courses target smaller towns

consumption boom.

“At present, over 50 percent of our students are from firsttier cities. We’ll put more resources in the third- and fourth-tier cities, letting children there enjoy high-quality English teaching resources.”

VIPkid and the Jack Ma Foundation have launched an English-language education initiative for schools in rural China with the goal of reaching 200 schools in rural China in two years, Mi said.

The firm makes efforts to teach Chinese to non-Chinese kids as well.

“As China’s presence on the global stage continues to grow, Lingo Bus has designed an immersive online Chinese learning program for students aged 5 to 12. This is expected to be a pioneer in bringing China to the world and bringing the world to China. It aims to attract 50,000 paid users and 10,000 professionally trained Mandarin teachers over the next three years,” said Mi.

However, Neil Wang, president of consulting firm Frost & Sullivan in China, struck a note of caution. “The online education sector faces some challenges. It’s hard to supervise and guarantee teaching quality as the quality of online teachers varies. Besides, students may not focus their attention during the learning process.”

Moreover, there are no comprehensive evaluation standards in place yet to assess the effectiveness of both teaching and learning, he said.

“The key to growth is to expand the course resources. Online platforms should provide tailor-made services and recommend textbooks depending on the age, occupation, interest of students,” he said.