Text|Mantis Finance (TanglangFin)
Author | Qingyue
"Promoting the priority and fair development of education", "Promoting the fair development and quality improvement of education", from 2013 to 2017, the annual government work report on education development planning has always been centered on "fairness".
On March 4 and 5, 2021, the 4th meeting of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the 4th meeting of the 13th National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China were held in Beijing. In the suggestions of the two sessions on the education industry, "education fairness" has become a "high-frequency word". In the discussion it triggered, "how online education can achieve high-quality development, and whether it can promote education equity" has won widespread attention.
As we all know, forced by the black swan, online education will usher in explosive growth in 2020. According to data from iiMedia Consulting, the scale of online education public accounts in my country will reach 351 million in 2020. Can the "carnival" online education solve the problem of educational injustice, and what role does the top online education brand headed by GSX play in it?
Education fairness has once again attracted heated discussions, and it is hoped to move from "basic equilibrium" to "quality equilibrium"
Although in recent years, my country's educational exploration has made great progress and development, there are still many problems in the allocation of resources in my country's education.
It can be clearly seen from the figure below that in highly developed cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhejiang, whether it is the "per capita disposable income" that measures the level of economic development in a certain area, or the "number of students in primary and secondary education" The indicators of the size of the regional education demand base are far higher than those in remote areas such as Guizhou, Gansu, and Tibet.
(Source: Yiou Think Tank, compiled based on data from "China Statistical Yearbook")
Children born with the golden key are born to throw away a lot of children from poor families in terms of resources for education. The uneven distribution of educational resources will directly hinder the maximum effect of education. In the view of "Mantis Finance", education fairness has always been difficult to effectively solve mainly due to the following three reasons:
First, there is a shortage of famous teachers in remote areas, and teachers are seriously aging.
Teachers are an important factor that affects students' perception of learning. I believe many people have had the experience of falling in love with a subject because they liked a teacher at the student stage. However, in remote areas, due to poor conditions, low salaries, and a teacher often having to do multiple jobs, many young teachers are reluctant to go to the countryside to be teachers. Most of them are relatively older teachers.
Young teachers and famous teachers are unwilling to teach in remote areas, and the decline in teaching quality has further increased the loss of students. The loss of high-quality students in rural areas will affect the perception of good teachers in the area and fall into a vicious circle.
Secondly, family education in rural areas cannot keep up.
Some rural parents are relatively outdated in education because of their limited cultural qualities. What's more, if parents work outside, their children are mostly taken care of by grandparents. Compared with parents in urban areas, their understanding of family education is much vague, and they even spoil their children and let them grow wild.
Finally, the source of students in rural areas is also being lost in a large amount.
The scarcity of famous teachers and the inability of family education in rural areas to keep up are part of the reasons for the loss of students. In addition, a large number of rural people have poured into cities and towns, and the rural population is shrinking sharply. According to data from the National Development and Reform Commission, my country's new urbanization will accelerate in 2020, and the effect of urbanization of rural migrants will be obvious. Cities with an urban permanent population of less than 3 million have basically lifted the settlement restriction, and more than 100 million rural migrants will settle in urban areas.
A large number of rural people go out to work and bring their children to the cities to go to school, which further increases the loss of rural students. Therefore, attracting high-quality students and curbing the loss of students are the next main theme of rural schools. Under the background that it is impossible to radiate first-class teaching resources to rural areas in the short term, can online education that is in full swing now solve the problem of educational injustice?
Problems are emerging, the implementation of supervision boots may resolve the "internal friction" of the online education industry
At the beginning of the ferment of the online education industry, it has always been hailed as the “killer” for promoting education equity.
In fact, to a certain extent, online education can indeed break the limitations of time and space and bring convenience to teachers and students in remote areas to share resources, obtain information, and assist teaching. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, people’s social distancing is limited. Under the call of “stop classes without stopping”, Gaotu Classroom provides free full-year, full-subject live classes to middle and elementary school students across the country, smoothing out the physical space of education. The difference.
The role of online education in promoting educational equity is undoubtedly, but some hidden dangers are gradually emerging in the process of its advancement.
First, 2020 is the year of online education carnival. It is reported that the number of new online education companies has skyrocketed from March 2020. As of October 2020, there have been 82,000 new online education companies throughout the year.
Among them, due to the low entry barriers involved in “education” online and the lack of industry standards, training institutions covered by the “Internet” have emerged one after another. As a result, educational institutions have grown brutally, curriculum time is too long, and electronic products lack science, etc. Problems such as systematic guidance need to be solved urgently.
Second, since 2020, the online education "fight for famous teachers" and "marketing to burn money" have been one after another and intensified, which will inevitably affect users' perception of the platform.
In NetEase Youdao, 51Talk and other online educational institutions successively released financial report data, marketing and loss are undoubtedly the most conspicuous keywords. According to statistics, in the first nine months of 2020, the total investment in advertising and sales of the three ape tutoring, homework help, and Xueersi online school amounted to about 5.5 billion yuan, more than twice that of the same period in 2019. Online education has become the trend of the third largest advertiser on mainstream platforms after e-commerce and games.
(Comparison of sales expense ratios of online education companies)
In the marketing war, "famous teachers" have become the focus of many online education institutions. In New Oriental, the "curse" of the famous teacher's departure has never dissipated. It is very common for the famous teacher to set up a separate portal with student resources to continue to compete with New Oriental in the English training market. In Ape Counseling, in 2020, Wang Wei, Li Ling, Hu Jie, Meng Fanyu, Leng Shiqiang, Wang Dapeng, Guan Haishan and other lecturers left one after another. When "famous teachers" are changed, the trust of users who are difficult to defend their rights in online education will naturally weaken.
Third, in some areas, the network signal is poor, and the economic burden of buying a smart phone is heavier.
The two prerequisites for the popularization of online education are the Internet and smart phones. But on the one hand, for some families, it is really difficult to afford the price of "this fate-changing screen".
On the other hand, according to the 47th "Statistical Report on Internet Development in China" released by CNNIC, as of December 2020, the number of Internet users in my country was 989 million, and the Internet penetration rate reached 70.4%, while the number of rural Internet users was 309 million. The Internet penetration rate in rural areas is 55.9%. It can be seen that the Internet penetration rate in some rural areas is relatively low.
In summary, it is not difficult to understand why some people have doubts about whether online education can promote educational equity.
However, after this phenomenon triggered heated discussions, Li Xin, a representative of the two sessions and vice chairman of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, proposed to strengthen industry supervision and promote the standardized, orderly and healthy development of the online education market. To strengthen the supervision of online education institutions in terms of charging standards and tuition security.
It can be foreseen that the boots of a new round of supervision will be on the horizon. "Mantis Finance" believes that it is not a bad thing that online education faces stricter supervision, and that industry regulations will inevitably increase the trust of students and parents in online education activities.
In addition, according to statistics, as of the first three quarters of 2020, nearly 100,000 education and training institutions have been cancelled nationwide. Supervision is strengthened to accelerate the reshuffle and clearing of the industry. Leading brands in the industry, such as GSX and Good Future, will gain greater advantages. In addition, stricter policy supervision has also eased the over-marketing situation in the industry to a certain extent, leading the industry on a path of sound development. So can the integrated leading online education institutions contribute to the promotion of educational equity?
Online education is a "tip sword" to promote education equity
It can be seen from the above that the existence of online educational institutions such as GSX, from some perspectives, has indeed broken the constraints of time and space, narrowed the education gap between urban and rural areas, and promoted educational equity to a certain extent.
However, the high level of online flatness gives education more efficient possibilities and wider possibilities for equality. However, the online flattening cannot automatically smooth out the offline gap. After all, there are still differences in development between urban and rural areas and regions in our country, leading to differences in online learning conditions for students.
Therefore, in the view of "Mantis Finance", the online education tool plays a more value-added and auxiliary role to education fairness. The difference in learning effect caused by different learning conditions and access to resources is not a problem of online education. To truly realize education equity, perhaps online education institutions and the government need to cooperate.
From the perspective of leading educational institutions in the online education industry, cost-effective courses can be launched to solve the problem of ordinary family education expenditures from the price link.
Take GSX as an example. In the course selection center of Gaotu Classroom, you can find that there are free courses for students from kindergarten to senior high school, physics and chemistry students and even art courses. In addition to allowing children from ordinary families to learn online, GSX also actively fulfills its social responsibilities and insists on doing charity activities within its capacity.
On September 10, 2020, Gaotu Class and Hezhang County People's Government launched the "Fishing Public Welfare" project under the guidance of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Office. In the form of teaching and research exchanges with teachers in poverty-stricken areas and donating online courses, it helps teachers in poverty-stricken areas improve their teaching methods, and finally achieves the goal of helping students in poverty-stricken areas to make progress in their studies.
In addition, online education institutions can also use artificial intelligence technology to meet diverse educational needs.
Artificial intelligence technology can integrate high-quality English teaching resources at home and abroad, eliminate differences in regional teaching resources and teaching levels; at the same time, it can carry out oral English teaching in primary schools, allowing rural children to speak English; it can also enhance the interactive experience of primary school English classrooms and improve rural children The quality and efficiency of English learning. In the bottom line, online education institutions can use technology to lay a solid foundation for rural students' follow-up learning and narrow the education gap between urban and rural areas.
Among these, technical online education institutions represented by GSX and Yuanjiao are obviously more advantageous. The founder team of GSX is mostly of technical background and has strong technical genes in itself. It promotes the in-depth integration of intelligent technology into teaching, through intelligent assessment, intelligent classroom, intelligent homework and other links. Yuandaodao is also a typical technical education and training organization. It was a tool software at the beginning of its establishment. Its products include Xiaobian Sou Ti and Yuan Ti Library.
Of course, as mentioned earlier, online education and policy support are more effective in solving educational inequities.
It is reported that the national primary and secondary school network cloud platform was officially launched on February 17, 2020, and 27 provinces have also opened provincial-level online learning platforms. With the joint efforts of the government and online education companies, the number of free and open online course resources has reached 41,000 according to statistics, and a large number of online teaching tools have also been launched.
In addition, the basic network environment of my country's schools has basically achieved full coverage. The national primary and secondary school network rate has risen from 69.3% in 2015 to 99.7%, and the proportion of schools with an export bandwidth of 100M has jumped from 12.8% to 98.7%. When the basic network environment can spread to every township, an effective mechanism to expand the coverage of high-quality educational resources will basically take shape.
All in all, the realization of education equity requires the government's attention and active promotion. In the next step, my country needs to accelerate the construction of a dedicated education network, provide fast and stable network guarantees for education and teaching, and support the open sharing of high-quality educational resources. At the same time, more companies with strong sense of social responsibility, such as GSX, need to work together so that students in different regions do not need to be controlled by local teachers, and realize education fairness in the true sense through online education and teaching videos.
*The pictures in this article are from the Internet
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