Chinese parents are again embracing online teaching as more schools in cities announced an earlier winter holiday, leaving online teaching to fill the void.
The number of applicants during the winter holidays has increased by more than 200 percent over the same period last year, Jason Wei Zhou, co-founder and CEO of an online education platform Yixue Squirrel AI, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
A parent surnamed Tu told the Global Times that she has booked online math and English online courses for her grade-one daughter for the coming winter holidays priced at nearly 1,500 yuan ($230).
The expectations by online education platforms and Chinese parents' rush came when cities in China adopt stricter control on school teaching as sporadic COVID-19 cases were recently identified.
Primary schools in Beijing holidays will start from January 16, two weeks earlier than previous years, amid the resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the capital city, according to Beijing Municipal Education Commission on Tuesday.
Cities including Suihua and Harbin in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province have announced that the winter holidays for primary and middle schools will start around New Year's Day in 2021.
In addition, some colleges and universities such as Hubei University and Yunnan Agricultural University have also announced that they will break earlier than usual.
In fact, the online teaching has become a mainstay as the COVID-19 pandemic has turned distance learning into a red-hot business and the new users and investors alike flocked into the high-flying education technology sector.
The revenues in the first quarter of this year was up 550 percent than the same period last year, and the monthly active users was 170 million, a growth of 41.67 percent than that before the coronavirus, Gao Shuo, vice president of public relations at Chinese online education startup Zuoyebang told the Global Times on Wednesday.
Alibaba Group Holding and Tiger Global Management LLC just led a $1.6 billion investment in Zuoyebang, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
The online education company Yuanfudao has secured $300 million from Jack Ma's Yunfeng Capital, bringing the overall funding for the company in 2020 to $3.5 billion, Chinese tech media outlet 36Kr reported last week.
Local research firm iResearch reports that China's online education market will reach 540 billion yuan by 2022.
However, analysts warn the online teaching market has been saturated as more capital pouring money in it.
Online teaching has entered into a stage of vicious competition, and there is a trend that companies over investing in marketing, instead of teaching itself, damaging the industry, Zheng Yongqi, co-founder from start-up Maque Yuwen, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
