The Winter Vacation Class Is Still Hot: Can Students Sign Up For Younger Age And Give Up Advanced Education?

"Is the winter vacation guidance arrangement yet?" This sentence has become a greeting in recent days by the parents group of Yang Bing (alias). Yang Bing's daughter is in grade two in a primary school in Chaoyang District, Beijing. In less than a month, winter vacation is coming.

In Yang Bing's eyes, her daughter has just had a failed first grade summer vacation. "School dance associations and their own dance classes arranged rehearsals and performances, which took a month and a half, cutting the two months of summer vacation to pieces, resulting in the rest of the time not arranged for outing, nor arranging counselling, and my daughter stayed at home to watch TV." She said.

The winter vacation is coming. Yang Bing intends to take her daughter to the south for a few days' vacation. In addition to continuing her participation in the dance rehearsal, she has made plans for her daughter to attend a tutorial class at a school in the rest of the year. She enrolled her daughter in the autumn class in October this year, and bought a winter vacation and a spring class a month later.

Zhao Na (a pseudonym) is a teacher from an extra-curricular training institution in Baotou, a city more than 600 kilometers away from Beijing. This small institution with only four or five teachers has just opened for half a year, and has recruited more than 60 students.

Her institution has begun recruiting students for the winter vacation class, which includes upgrading classes and consolidation classes, charging 50-80 yuan per hour, and the price per student is almost the same as that of online schools. "But there are few students online, and parents still want someone to supervise their children." From another perspective, it also provides a broad space for the competitive online education market.

In this five line small county town, parents are also enthusiastic about extracurricular guidance. Zhao Na said, "they want to let their children soak in cram school all day." She has just recruited more than ten students in her winter vacation class, but she is not worried about it. "When the final exam results come out, parents will act."

Hunger marketing for training institutions

The daughter was just in grade two, and there were two examinations in the mid-term exam, 100 points. Yang Bing did not worry too much. But she did not hesitate to give her daughter a winter vacation counseling class. Her daughter reported to her classmates in the class. She could speak a few words in one breath.

Yang Bing used to think that children need to report classes after grade three, but after school this year, she found that grade two primary school students have been very popular. "One reason is that the price of online schools is cheap, and the trouble of walking to offline institutions is omitted. The other reason is the introduction of large Chinese language and mathematical thinking products, so that junior students who have no academic difficulties have exclusive courses." She said.

In October, Yang Bing enrolled her daughter in the two grade autumn language and math tutoring class, and her daughter loved it very much. The young male teachers graduated from Beijing University will wear cartoon costumes and cartoon headwear for every class. Before you smile, you will first send your student a red envelope. The gold coins you can get from your students can exchange gifts at the online school mall. Not only does the daughter concentrate on her whole life, she also takes the initiative to make notes.

But Yang Bing also has a bit of worry, online classes 90 minutes each time, and 10 minutes before class online preview and 20 minutes after class online consolidation. After two hours of counselling, her daughter's eyelid is swollen. Wang Xuenan, an assistant research fellow of the Institute of education development and reform of the Chinese Academy of Educational Sciences, found that 80.34% of the surveyed students took part in off campus training or tutoring, and 81.06% of the surveyed students were myopic. A questionnaire survey was conducted among thousands of students in Beijing.

In October this year, Yang Bing's daughter had just finished two autumn language tutorial sessions, and the school organized a parent's meeting, and began to promote the spring school couplet course of the online school. "This year, in order to give feedback to students, the network school has avoided the students' partial disciplines, and has offered a discount for reducing tuition fees." The teacher said.

According to the teacher's lecture, the quota for the two new winter vacation classes has been filled. If the old trainees do not sign up, they will be open to new trainees.

Yang Bing thinks this is obvious hunger marketing. "If we have quota restriction on the line, we can understand that after all, the capacity of a classroom is limited, but on the one hand, these online training institutions claim that technology can satisfy thousands of people at the same time, and on the other hand, it restricts the enrollment quota, and the purpose is obvious."

But Yang Bing didn't care, because she had decided to renew her daughter's report. "When you get on this ship, you will never get off the boat again." Before the deadline, she paid the tuition fee for the spring festival couplet, which was reduced to 90 yuan from 80 yuan in the fall class.

"I am really nervous. I am nervous for you. It is too late to sign up." The main teacher kept smiling face on the monitor.

Advance teaching temptation

Behind the busy holidays of primary school students is the crazy marketing of online educational institutions.

According to reports, for the summer enrollment, as of July, online marketing companies participating in the summer marketing campaign put together a total of 30-40 billion yuan. On the market there is an online education company advertising average 1 days 10 million yuan. Some people joked that the money saved a large number of advertising companies.

This allows agencies to pay a price on the one hand, and to harvest a large number of trainees on the other hand. According to the results, the good future group (learning and thinking parent company) spent 1 billion 840 million yuan on marketing from June to August, and the key promoted school of thought and network school enrolled about 1 million 400 thousand students in three months.

Some schools have the original price of 599 yuan, and the preferential price for summer vacation is only 49 yuan. That is to say, these low price students will suffer huge losses if they fail to renew their courses.

In order to improve the continuous rate of the autumn classes to the winter vacation classes, some online schools have regained the "hierarchical teaching" of the traditional offline institutions. In the first year, mathematics class is divided into one target class, 985 target classes, target clear North class, target self comprehensive evaluation class and target competition class. It is reported that hierarchical teaching has significantly improved the rate of continuous reporting of online schools, and has even reached about 70%.

Zhao Na's training institutions in the five line small town have also carried out hierarchical teaching. The winter vacation class is divided into the promotion class and the reinforcement class. "The difficulty of the promotion class is higher, and the new content of the next semester is about half".

This "advance teaching" has been banned by policy. The opinions issued by the general office of the State Council on standardizing the development of off campus training institutions, issued in August 2018, put forward that training schedules must match the grades of students enrolled, and the training progress should not exceed the same period in the primary and secondary schools.

"Our little place is not so strict," Zhao Na said. Since its opening, the training class has not been inspected by the Education Bureau. "Even the teacher has not checked the teacher's certificate."

For the education sector, examination for training courses is also difficult. "We are not teaching and research personnel. It is really difficult for the off campus training institutions to conduct advanced or super teaching. A staff member of Sichuan Education Department said.

Guo Yansong, Assistant Research Fellow of Jilin Academy of Educational Sciences, wrote in September this year that the training institutions outside the school have different levels of hidden dangers, "super class teaching", "early teaching" and "strengthening examination". All the timetable or teaching contents that have been checked are prepared beforehand, so as to avoid the thorough investigation of various departments.

The rush to run at the starting line is the main reason for many parents to give children guidance classes, and it is also the source of more parents' anxiety. Nowadays, with the emergence of new tutoring products such as big language and mathematical thinking, the age of extracurricular counselling students is constantly dropping.

At the December 16th TEC education conference, Wang Nan, an Ivy education partner, an internet education company providing bilingual enlightenment for young children, introduced a large Chinese course on the end of August. It sold more than 100 thousand copies in three months, and sales exceeded 20 million yuan.

"A key point in the growth of (performance) is time, to seize the opportunity." Wang Nan said that this large language course for children at the stage of convergence has already included 700 words that must be learned in the primary school.

Love hate counseling class

The winter vacation has not arrived, anxiety has reached the boiling point. How to alleviate this?

Some places have creatively adopted self regulatory actions. A briefing on the website of the Sichuan Provincial Department of Education said that the province's standardized measures include guiding agencies not to make up classes for holidays, and arranging teaching plans reasonably for holidays. This year the average summer vacation in institutions across the province has been suspended for more than 2 weeks.

"Children should play on holidays," the Sichuan Provincial Education Department staff told the twenty-first Century economic news reporter. "But we are not mandatory training institutions do not make up lessons during the holidays, but to appeal to them and get better coordination."

But supervision inevitably appears "cat and mouse game". Guo Yansong said that in the process of supervision and inspection, many training institutions will avoid inspection by way of suspension of business. When the law enforcement department inspects a training institution, all training institutions will be closed. In addition, the training institutions set up in private homes even refuse to open the door when they are in class.

Exam oriented education spawned strong demand for extracurricular guidance from the root. But what does this mean in the era of universal counseling? Long term study of Beijing education, said Wen Feng, in 2019, Beijing candidates in ordinary undergraduate batch admission, to enter the 42 world-class universities, the proportion of colleges and universities only 4.93%. "Haidian six small strong" every year at the beginning of the year, the total enrollment of about 3800 people, roughly received about 15% of the total number of primary school graduates in Haidian District. Even the 15% students will only be a minority in the top two universities in the future.

"It is much better to let children learn more about their interests, skills and hobbies than to let them learn a lot of tests and exams at the beginning of their studies." Wen Feng said.

"I know that eighty or ninety of the children in the tutorial class end up becoming" denominator ", but I have no courage to give up. Yang Bing said.