BEIJING, March 14 (Xinhua) Recently, the Key Laboratory of Big Data Mining and Knowledge Management of the Chinese Academy of Sciences released the White Paper on Online English Education for Children in China in 2017. According to the report, online English education for children in China is spreading its influence around the world, covering 35 countries and regions around the world. Except for China, Japanese, Canadian and American have the largest number of young students who use the services of educational enterprises in China.
In the domestic market, first-tier cities such as Beishangguangshen and Shenzhen have become the main force in the online children’s English education market. The three major brands have divided 80% of the domestic market, and VIPKID has a 55% market share; Domestic students tend to be younger, with an average age of about 6 years old. Most parents are willing to spend more than 10,000 yuan a year for this, and 70% parents are willing to choose North American foreign teachers with pure accents and lively teaching.
The data also shows that the total daily class hours of online children’s English education in China have exceeded 100,000. From this calculation, parents in China saved 146 million hours in total, effectively solving the pain point of parents’ time-consuming and labor-intensive transportation of their children to class. In terms of teaching staff, there are currently more than 30,000 foreign teachers in North America providing online English teaching services to students around the world, with an average teaching experience of 7.5 years. All of them have bachelor’s degrees or above, and many of them have ivy league backgrounds, including Columbia University, Duke University, Harvard University, Brown University and Stanford University.
Dr. Zhong Yunqin, Key Laboratory of Big Data Mining and Knowledge Management, Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes that the follow-up survey in recent years shows that the extensive online education service model is gradually losing its appeal and its business growth is obviously limited; The high-quality personalized Internet education platform pays more attention to the inherent development law of education, and creatively combines new educational concepts, teaching models, artificial intelligence, big data and other technical means to better meet the needs of users in the new era for personalized education. The global rise of domestic online education brands represented by VIPKID caters to this trend and explores new ideas for future educational innovation.
The average age of online students is 6 years old, and the number of people in East China accounts for over 30%.
The combination of the Internet and traditional education has given birth to a brand-new business scene. Teachers and students are no longer bound by geographical constraints, and students may connect with excellent educational resources around the world without leaving home. At present, the number of paid students on the VIPKID platform exceeds 200,000, covering 35 countries and regions around the world. Japan, the United States and Canada are the three countries with the largest number of overseas students on this platform. Generally speaking, online education has shown strong portability and is becoming an important means for children to learn English all over the world.
From the domestic market, first-tier cities such as Beishangguangshen and Shenzhen have become the main force in the online children’s English education market, and the three major regions of North China, East China and South China, which radiate from this, account for 81% of the overall market. Among them, the number of students in East China accounts for the highest proportion, with a share of 36%. North China and South China followed closely with 27% and 18% respectively. Compared with other regions, parents in coastal and economically developed areas are more receptive to online education mode and more willing to cultivate their children’s English ability from an early age.
According to the market survey, the Chinese Academy of Sciences shows that the domestic online children’s English education market is still in an early stage after only four years of development. In terms of market share, the top three companies at present are VIPKID, 51Talk and vipJr, which account for more than 80% of the market, of which VIPKID accounts for 55% of the domestic market; In terms of the number of foreign teachers, there are more than 30,000 foreign teachers working on the VIPKID platform, which exceeds the total number of foreign teachers of all other online education brands in China.
In major cities, the number of VIPKID students in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Chengdu occupies the top five. This is roughly consistent with the search distribution results of "VIPKID" in Baidu Index. It is worth noting that the students in two quasi-first-tier cities, Hangzhou and Chengdu, are growing rapidly, pushing Guangzhou, which ranked fourth in 2016, to sixth place. Cities such as Nanjing, Wuhan, Dalian and Chongqing also entered the TOP10.
At present, children’s English learning in China tends to be younger. From the perspective of urban distribution, the average age of students in first-tier cities is generally around 6 years old, and the average age of students in second-tier cities has slightly risen to 6.5 years old. The survey also shows that more and more parents begin to consider English education before their children are 3 years old.
Online mode helps parents in China save 146 million hours a year.
Driven by the deepening economic and cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries, the maturity of internet education technology and application, and the reform of English teaching, the online English education model for children has been recognized by more and more families and parents. Among them, parents in first-tier cities such as Beishangguang have fully realized that online education is an effective way to quickly improve their children’s English listening and speaking level, and the related cognition of parents in second-tier cities has also been significantly improved. In contrast, parents in third-and fourth-tier cities are still relatively vague about the concept of Internet education, and the market needs more patient cultivation.
The data shows that users in the online children’s English market have strong spending power, and middle-class families with an annual income of 200,000-1 million account for 58%. Most parents said that they would spend more than 10,000 yuan on their children’s English education every year. Despite the high cost, most families still think that online English education has remarkable learning effect and high cost performance.
According to the survey data of a large number of parents by Chinese Academy of Sciences, the phenomenon that many parents passively choose Asian foreign teachers is changing under the previous insufficient supply. At present, 73.6% of parents prefer to choose foreign teachers in North America for three reasons: foreign teachers in North America have purer accents and more lively teaching methods, and North America is the first choice for their children to study abroad. 22.1% parents tend to choose British or Australian foreign teachers, while only 4.3% are willing to choose Asian (Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia) foreign teachers.
In online children’s English learning, after-class evaluation is a very important part of the evaluation of learning effect. At present, the number of foreign teachers on the VIPKID platform exceeds 30,000, and the total number of evaluations by users after class exceeds 5 million, and each foreign teacher receives an average of 167 evaluations. Foreign teachers with five-star praise are more favored by parents, and foreign churches with bad reviews are quickly eliminated by the market. A tripartite feedback mechanism between parents, North American foreign teachers and online platforms is taking shape. In terms of specific dimensions, "paying attention to pronunciation", "being patient and friendly" and "being good at guiding" are the three evaluation keywords that parents are most concerned about, and the number of evaluations related to each keyword exceeds 1 million.
The rise of online English education mode highlights many disadvantages of traditional offline mode. According to the survey of offline traditional mode, 85% parents complain that it takes time and effort to pick up and drop off their children, which is particularly prominent in first-tier cities. Many parents spend far more time on picking up and dropping off their children than the class hours themselves. 68% of parents think that the level of offline foreign teachers is uneven and the choice space is extremely limited; 61% parents think that offline mode is not conducive to systematically understanding their children’s learning progress; 49% parents think that there is too little interaction in offline large class mode; 28% of parents said that their children are not interested in learning in offline institutions.
Online education allows more and more children to enjoy North American English education without leaving home, which saves parents a lot of time. The survey shows that parents in big cities spend an average of more than 2.5 hours on picking up and waiting for a class for their children, and the average time spent in small and medium-sized cities is about 1.8 hours.
At present, VIPKID has 100,000 online courses every day, which exceeds 50% of the total online courses of the same kind in China. Calculated by saving 2 hours per class, online mode saved about 146 million hours for parents in China. Even according to the walking distance, it saves parents in China nearly 730 million kilometers a year, which is equivalent to 18,250 laps around the equator of the earth. Switching to car transport calculation will help China families save about 650,000 tons of gasoline consumption every year.
The data shows that when children adapt to the online mode, 82% of online children’s English learners complete their classes independently without their parents’ company. At the same time, parents are more willing to learn about their children’s learning at any time with the help of classroom video playback and real-time class monitoring system. More than 87% parents have used the course playback function within one month, including 13% parents who work in different places or travel, who have used the real-time class monitoring function within one month.
Because the online children’s English learners are generally young, and the teaching pays more attention to the improvement of English comprehensive ability such as expression, parents’ feedback on the effect is lagging behind. VIPKID class data shows that in the first five classes, parents think that the effective curve grows more slowly; With the deepening of the course, the growth rate of the feedback result curve is obviously improved, and the maximum growth rate is ushered in in the 20 th section; Since then, parents’ satisfaction has shown a continuous growth trend.
Among the extracurricular reading materials of online children’s English education, excellent picture books are more popular with children. On the VIPKID open class platform, the TOP5 five are all excellent picture books, including popular science, fairy tales, humanities and other topics. In terms of reading habits, it becomes an open class collective "movie-watching day" for parents of students every Friday night.
The average teaching experience of foreign teachers in North America is 7.5 years, and the master’s degree is over 30%
According to the data of foreign teachers from VIPKID, the foreign teachers in North America engaged in online children’s English education are mainly concentrated in the eastern part of the United States, followed by the central part of the United States, the western part of the United States and the southeastern part of Canada. In terms of specific states, Texas in central China ranks first in the number of foreign teachers, followed by Florida, Utah, Georgia and California, the largest state in the United States.
Among the TOP10 cities in North America, Orlando, a city in central Florida, has the largest number of foreign teachers, and Chicago and Houston rank second and third, with a small gap with Orlando. As the sole representative of Canadian cities, Toronto ranks fourth.
According to the data of VIPKID foreign teachers, the number of foreign teachers in North America who have been teaching for more than 5 years accounts for 70%, with an average teaching experience of 7.5 years. Among them, foreign teachers with 10-20 years of teaching experience account for 25%, and foreign teachers with more than 20 years of teaching experience account for 7%. In terms of academic qualifications, all foreign teachers in North America have bachelor’s degrees or above, of which 30% are masters and 2% are doctors. From the data of appointment, foreign teachers with longer teaching experience are more popular with parents, and foreign teachers with active expressive force are also deeply loved; It is worth noting that the number of male foreign teachers only accounts for 10% of the total, and the demand for classes is in short supply.
The Internet education model has enabled foreign teachers who graduated from top universities in the world to enter China families. The data shows that among the more than 30,000 North American foreign teachers, there are many graduates from American Ivy League and well-known universities, including Columbia University, Duke University, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Brown University and Stanford University. These foreign teachers with prestigious backgrounds cover pedagogy, psychology, special education, literature, sociology and economics.
The survey shows that the focus of foreign teachers in North America in the process of online teaching is first to improve their self-skills, followed by a sense of accomplishment and educational public welfare, and finally to improve their income and cross-cultural communication experience. With its mature teacher training system, VIPKID continues to empower foreign teachers, thus becoming the most popular online children’s English education platform for foreign teachers in North China in 2017, and surpassing Amazon to become the first in the list of the most popular telecommuting platforms in the United States, which also highlights the unique attraction of online education in for foreign teachers.
The rapid development of online children’s English industry allows foreign teachers to freely choose various teaching platforms. When choosing a teaching platform, foreign teachers in North America first look at the number of students on the platform, followed by the degree of technical stability and whether the course content is easy to teach and learn; In addition, the popularity of the platform and the teaching atmosphere are also important factors affecting foreign teachers in North America. At present, in the major social networking sites in the United States, the popularity of VIPKID far exceeds that of 51Talk and vipJr, which rank second and third.
Online mode promotes education and benefits a large number of rural primary schools.
The Internet has enabled a large number of high-quality educational resources to cover children in poor areas in China in a short period of time, and various online education platforms in China have launched various public welfare activities. "VIPKID" has been extended to 100 rural schools since it started on September 12, 2017. These schools are located in 21 provinces in China, with Yunnan, Gansu and Guizhou accounting for the largest proportion.
Compared with the trend of younger students in cities, English education in rural areas generally started late. According to the 100 rural schools covered by "VIPKID", most rural children’s English education begins after the third grade. The combination of online education and public welfare has enabled more North American foreign teachers to enter rural classrooms. Among the 3,745 students covered by the VIPKID public welfare project, 92% said that they were exposed to foreign teachers for the first time.
With the help of online education mode, the plight of weak and limited English teachers in rural schools has been quickly improved. "VIPKID foreign teachers from North America enter the rural classroom" only took one month, and the average completion rate jumped from the initial 78% to over 90%, and some of them have already achieved 100% completion.
For rural children, learning English faces many challenges, including the lack of local English teachers, poor English teaching materials and equipment, and parents’ insufficient attention to English education. According to the survey of rural children’s wishes, the number one in rural children’s minds is looking forward to "more foreign teachers’ classes", followed by "more picture books", and "parents pay more attention to my study", and "I can communicate in English" is also at the top of the wish list.
