Sino-Singapore Jingwei Client, November 12 (Zhao Jiaran) "Don't let your children lose on the starting line!" Behind this sentence is the novice parents who have broken their hearts for their children's early education.
According to industry reports, China's early childhood education market is expected to reach 290 billion yuan in 2020, and it may exceed 320 billion yuan by 2025.
The "starting line battle" is intensifying. When parents "spend big money", they still face the risk of poor management of institutions and difficulty in refunding high tuition fees.
Is it easier or more difficult to develop a "lang Lang"?
38-year-old Zhang Hui worked as an executive in a large IT company. She was able to do well in the workplace, but after returning home, she faced a "difficult to read"-the education problem of two children.
The eldest daughter is less than 6 years old, and the second daughter has just turned 4, and Zhang Hui and her lover have set up an early education plan since they were born.
In addition to kindergarten, she enrolled 11 early education training classes for her two children, 6 for the eldest daughter and 5 for the youngest daughter.
Seeing that the children's daily time is fully arranged, Zhang Hui is still thinking about whether it is necessary to add early education courses.
"English class twice a week, 60 minutes each time, it is not enough for language learning, more language environment is needed." Thinking of this, she added a private English lesson for her eldest daughter on the weekend.
In these courses, if parents can be allowed to accompany and guide, she will make time to accompany as much as possible.
As for the specific amount of early education courses, Zhang Hui has not calculated it in detail.
According to a rough estimate, at a price of about 200 yuan per lesson, two children will need to spend more than 2,000 yuan in just one week, and more than 100,000 yuan a year.
Although early education takes up a lot of energy and money for parents, Zhang Hui still feels that no lesson is wasted.
"I have also seen parents who haven't reported to their children for any class, but everyone has their own style. We hope to develop children's various abilities as much as possible. For example, at the age of knowing colors, we must go to the corresponding Painting class, after this stage, there is no point in taking it again."
Talking about the next plan for the children, Zhang Hui seemed more anxious. The reason was that children with faster learning progress continued to appear around him, and some parents even arranged the education plan ten years later.
"Take the piano as an example. It is said that the conditions are good now and it is easier to cultivate a'lang Lang'. But the problem is that everyone is now a'lang Lang'." In Zhang Huis' view, parents nowadays generally value Early education and investing a lot of time and energy makes it harder for children to excel in a certain field.
This year’s "30", Zhai Le, who works in the financial industry, also attached great importance to early education.
Since the child was less than 2 years old, he purchased more than 20,000 yuan of early education courses, which is about 400 yuan per lesson.
For her, although early lessons cannot achieve obvious results in a short period of time, they are just needed in a sense.
"We can only take classes once or twice a week, each class is more than 20 minutes. In fact, the content is very small, but there are many children of the same age in the class, and I want the children to improve their social skills and come out to exercise." In addition, Zhai Le The selected early education classes are all equipped with foreign teachers.
"I think that children's acceptance of most subjects is average when they are young, but language skills are cultivated from birth, and foreign teachers are not considered'highly matched'." However, even if Zhai Le and her husband's annual income exceeds 600,000 Yuan, she still feels that the price of this early lesson is low.
Zhai Le's daughter is teaching in the early morning class
According to the China-Singapore Jingwei reporter, most of the early education institutions on the market currently claim that children can go to early education from the age of zero. Some institutions have also introduced a policy that babies can attend classes for free from 0-6 months. Of course, the premise is that parents have ordered a course package.
Recently, when the reporter visited some early education institutions in Beijing, he found that many parents brought a few months old baby to class. The sales of early education institutions also stated that "a baby will come to class in about 4 months. It will climb" and other cases as selling points for sales.
It is understood that the course length of these early education institutions ranges from 45 minutes to 1 hour, and the charge is about 200 yuan. A course package ranges from 40 to 200 lessons. The longer the lesson time, the lower the unit price. Sales will also highly recommend parents. Purchase longer lesson packages.
With the spread of the epidemic, many offline early education institutions temporarily suspended classes, and now Zhai Le is also used to the rhythm of online classes with his children.
"I am now a little bit more concerned about the "Buddhism" of early childhood education. I don't seek to lead everywhere. Children can keep learning for a long time. Besides, if you start early, you can definitely reach the end early?"
How to treat the topic of early education classes has also caused many discussions on social media.
Some netizens believe that early education institutions generally charge excessively high fees, and the learning content is not rich, which results in inadequate cost performance. There are also views that the role of early education institutions is not only to learn knowledge, but to relieve parents' pressure and release children's vitality.
@莫再提: I thought it was just to play, I felt I didn't learn anything.
As far as I am concerned, children like it here, and the money is worth it.
@贝贝家的凯特: In fact, it takes only 45 minutes to 1 hour to teach a lesson early. The real parent-child companionship is still in normal times. In my opinion, the significance of early education is not what she has learned, but in this In the process, I learned how to guide her.
@DDBee: I have discovered that when children start to be interested in the content of a class, they are about to end to the next topic.
Therefore, considering all things considered, I will not let him go to the so-called early education for the time being. The cost performance and effect are really not high.
@大步走的小风: The purpose of enrolling children in early education is very clear, which is to spend money to create opportunities to take children out to play.
It would be nice if the price could be cheaper.
In the nearly 300 billion market, how many cups can the early education company share?
According to the "2019 New Middle-class Family Consumption and Financial Management Report" issued by Tencent Licaitong and the 21st Century Economic Research Institute, from the perspective of expenditure structure, families with higher incomes account for a greater proportion of expenditures on children's education: the report said, In 55% of the new middle-class families, children’s education expenditures account for 10%-30% of total expenditures, and 9.9% of families’ children’s education expenditures account for more than 50% of total expenditures.
Among families with an annual income of more than 800,000 yuan, 15.5% of families’ children’s education expenditures accounted for more than 50% of total expenditures.
It is reported that the annual income of the households studied by the report is more than 200,000 yuan. They have generally received higher education. Most of them are engaged in professional or management positions, mostly in first- and second-tier cities across the country.
From the perspective of the overall market, the relevant analysis of the Foresight Institute pointed out that from 2010 to 2019, the market size of China's early education industry has increased year by year, with an average annual compound growth rate of 15.44%. The early education market is expected to reach 290 billion yuan in 2020.
At present, there are about 98 million children aged 0-6 in China. The average family's early education consumption is 2,600 yuan. The average annual growth rate is expected to be 5%. By 2025, the market size of early childhood education for children aged 0-6 in China will be 328.4 billion yuan.
The enthusiasm of the early education market can also be seen from the performance of listed companies.
According to the annual report of A-share listed company Mejim, its revenue in 2019 was 630 million yuan, and its parent net profit was 120 million yuan, an increase of 279.40%.
In the first three quarters of 2020, the company achieved revenue of 266 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 44.72%, and its parent net profit was 102 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22.31%.
Guosen Securities stated in its research report that it expects its early education subsidiary Tianjin Mejiem to achieve a performance of about 40 million yuan in the third quarter.
Photo by Luo Kun, the new latitude and longitude in the Megim data map
According to previous financial reports, the number of MGM contracting centers in China in 2018 was 434, and by the end of 2019 it was 524, an increase of more than 20%.
During the 2020 epidemic, this data still achieved growth against the trend. As of the first half of 2020, the number of Mejim China Early Education Centers has increased by 11 compared with 2019.
The company stated that the Megim Early Education Center mainly adopts the franchise model to develop its business and adopts the single store authorization model.
According to data from Tianyancha App, the well-known brand Golden Baby Early Education entered the Chinese market in 2003 and was divested by Golden Baby Group in 2016. It was acquired by Yixiang Holdings at a price of US$127.5 million. As of 2017, there have been more than 300 early childhood education in China. center.
In addition, the early childhood brand Building Block Baby received nearly 100 million yuan in Series B financing in December 2019, and Quanyoujia received 35 million yuan in strategic financing in July 2020.
Among many online education fields, the early childhood education industry is favored by capital.
IiMedia Consulting's "2019 China Early Childhood Education Market Status and Investment Trend Value Analysis Report" pointed out that from the perspective of financing companies, early childhood education companies received the highest number of investments in 2018, accounting for 20.9%, followed by K12 and education Information technology enterprises.
Expert: The field of early education urgently needs positioning and regulation
Under the rising heat, in recent years, early education institutions have suspended classes and been exposed to suspend operations, which has brought consumers the risk of course interruption and difficulty in refunding fees.
In March 2020, the Beijing Caoqiao Center of Yuebaoyuan announced that the store was officially closed due to insufficient funds.
Yuebaoyuan Education issued a statement stating that the closed shop center is an independent operation center.
According to the Beijing Business Daily, the staff of the center said at the time that refunds were more difficult to achieve and that they would handle the conversion of class hours for parents.
In August, many parents reported that a "Qiaohu KIDS" Early Education Center in Fengtai District, Beijing declared bankruptcy, causing more than 400 parents of students to suffer losses.
Subsequently, the general agent of Qiaohu KIDS China issued a statement stating that all Qiaohu KIDS centers are independently operated by the investors of each center.
Many parents who spend in the center reported to the Sino-Singapore Jingwei client that the store did not unify the unit price of class hours when charging fees, and 7% of the payment amount was required to be deducted when applying for a refund.
According to the official website, as of November 2019, Qiaohu KIDS authorized 170 stores nationwide in 77 cities.
In an interview with Sino-Singapore Jingwei Client, Xiong Bingqi, Dean of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, said that the current early education industry, especially for children aged 2-3 years old, is basically market-based, and related early education institutions have mixed good and bad supplies. Not waiting.
When the market space is insufficient, due to insufficient regulation, higher prices will occur.
Xiong Bingqi pointed out that in recent years, relevant departments have issued relevant policies and regulations for the field of early education for 0-3 and 3-6 years old. However, there is still a lack of clear industry positioning. For example, standardizing industry standards requires a large amount of financial support and it will take time.
In recent years, the cessation of operations caused by broken institutional capital chains or excessive losses also reflects the urgent need for standardization and clarification of responsibilities in the industry.
Regarding the consumption of middle-class families in the field of early education, Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Educational Sciences, told the Sino-Singapore Jingwei client that parents’ emphasis on early education is reasonable, but it should be based on the knowledge of early education.
If you blindly and simply believe that the more investment, the better the education effect, it may bring about negative effects.
"Some parents train their children as towering trees, but in fact, children may need grass-based training methods. If they fall into misunderstandings, they may harm their autonomy. In general, we must first fully consider the needs of their children, and secondly It is necessary to judge the professionalism of early education institutions.” Chu Zhaohui further stated that parents need to weigh various needs when choosing an early education institution and consume cautiously.
(Zhongxin Jingwei APP)
(At the request of the interviewee, both Zhang Hui and Zhai Le in the article are pseudonyms)
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