51Talk to hire 100,000 more English teachers

ONLINE education platform 51Talk said on Tuesday it would hire an additional 100,000 Filipino English teachers over the next five years.

“There is a strong demand for online English lessons for children in China, based on the fact that the household investment in education and English requirements for students have been on the rise,” 51Talk founder and CEO Jack Huang explained.

According to him, the Philippines is among the best English-speaking countries in Asia.

Launched in the country in 2012, 51Talk has more than 16,000 homebased Filipinos teaching online and 10 million registered learners in China.

Huang said demand for online English teachers was expected to continue to grow, as a “report from [the] Chinese Academy of Social Sciences shows that China has a large English consumer group of 300 million people.”

“The English training market in China is as large as $72 billion,” he added.

Demand for online foreign teachers already exceeded 500,000, according to him.

“The demand will grow to 100,000 home-based online teachers in the Philippines in the next five years,” he added.

51Talk was established in 2011 and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in June 2016. It is headquartered in Beijing and has branches in Shanghai, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Jinan, and Suzhou.

51Talk’s platform is available in the Philippines and has training centers in the cities of Pasig, Davao, Bacolod in Negros Occidental province and Baguio in Benguet province, as well as Cavite and Pampanga provinces.