Weaving Secret Supervision Law Net to Create Quality Online Courses
Capital rushes into the online education industry, false propaganda and money run away from time to time
● In recent years, the online education industry has developed rapidly. Due to the crazy influx of capital and the lack of supervision, many online training institutions have deviated from the original intention of education, and false propaganda and money running away have occurred from time to time.
● Relevant departments should increase market supervision and establish and improve supervision mechanisms.
At the same time, the supply of free and high-quality online resources should be increased to meet the needs of students for online learning
● Strictly investigate and punish training institutions' violations of laws and regulations, and expose them through multiple channels to form a warning and deterrent, and guide training institutions to regulate operations
□ Trainee reporter Zhang Shoukun
□ reporter Wang Yang
Sometimes Yuanjiao “has been a math teacher in elementary school for a lifetime”, sometimes it is “a teacher who has taught English for 40 years” in Gaotu Classroom, and sometimes it is an expert in Qingbei Online School who “calculates the answer in seconds”, and does not forget to recommend parents to try Trial homework to help live the class... Recently, the advertisements of these 4 leading online education companies have aroused heated discussion because they hired the same "teacher" for advertising.
This farce uncovered the chaos of online education and propaganda and attracted the attention of regulatory authorities.
Recently, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection published a related article, questioning online education "whether there is disorderly competition for capital, who is running education, and how to regulate operation and supervision according to law", pointing directly to the chaos and chaos of online education under the capital whirlpool. Regulatory issues.
Experts interviewed by a reporter from the Rule of Law Daily believe that the online education industry has developed rapidly in recent years. Due to the crazy influx of capital and lack of supervision, many online training institutions have deviated from the original intention of education, false propaganda, overdue fees, and money running away. And other incidents happen from time to time.
In this regard, relevant departments should increase market supervision and establish a sound supervision mechanism.
At the same time, the supply of free and high-quality online resources should be increased to meet the needs of students for online learning.
Burning money marketing false propaganda
Seriously deviated from the essence of education
At the beginning of 2020, affected by the epidemic, the Ministry of Education issued the requirement of “suspending classes without stopping teaching, and without stopping classes”. In addition, most regions have issued regulations on suspension of offline training institutions, and online education has developed rapidly.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Education, as of April 3, 2020, the number of students participating in online courses has reached 1.18 billion.
According to the statistics of QuestMobile, a third-party data agency, in February 2020, the weekly active numbers of Xueersi Online School, Homework Gang, and Yuantuo were 6.159 million, 7.408 million and 3.781 million, respectively, an increase of 5 to 7 times from January. Own flow.
The child of Zhang Hong (a pseudonym) in Fengtai District, Beijing, is one of the mighty online classes.
She told a reporter from the Rule of Law Daily that online classes are much cheaper than offline classes, and replays can be watched at any time, and there are no traffic jams or parking problems. Coupled with the impact of the epidemic, online learning has become the first choice for many parents and children.
According to the “Dianshubao” e-commerce database of the Net Economics, there were 111 financings for online education in my country in 2020, with a total amount of more than 53.93 billion yuan, and this total amount also exceeded the previous four years (2016-2019) The sum of financing.
The "2020 Mobile Internet Advertising Insights Report" released by QuestMobile shows that the education industry is currently in the stage of money-burning marketing. Traditional advertising scenes, subways, buses, elevators and TVs have long become standard equipment for education companies, even in some fourth- and fifth-tier cities. Advertisements from online training institutions are often seen on stop signs and bus bodies, and they have been extended to various methods such as naming, sponsorship, celebrity endorsement promotion, and short video live broadcast platforms.
The large-scale involvement of capital has caused a series of new problems while promoting the rapid update and iteration of the online education industry.
On January 18, the website of the State Supervision Commission of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection published an article directly pointing to the chaos and supervision of online education on the cusp of the storm.
It is mentioned in the article that under the boost of capital, enterprise competition has intensified and industry internal consumption has become serious.
Throughout 2020, online education companies have continued to close down and run away due to funding and charging issues. Many of them include the former star companies Xuebajun and Disney English, which also prove the disadvantages caused by blind investment.
With the arrival of the winter vacation, a reporter from the "Rules of Law Daily" found that marketing routines such as "49 yuan and 33 lessons, and then free delivery of teaching materials", "19 yuan and 20 lessons, and a gift package worth 499 yuan", began to flood again. Many short-lived live video platforms have also seen many “famous teachers” whose identities have become mysteries, including the oolong incident of the four online course training institutions mentioned above, and these courses are often far below the cost of teachers and teaching materials. The price of quality.
There are also industry insiders who admitted that marketing investment can often account for more than 60% of the cost of online education companies. They would rather spend 10 billion yuan on advertising than 1 billion yuan on the cultivation of teachers.
Cheng Pingyuan, a professor at the School of Social Development of Nanjing Normal University, said that according to Article 24, Item 3 of the Advertising Law, education and training advertisements must not use the name or image of scientific research units, academic institutions, educational institutions, industry associations, professionals, or beneficiaries. Recommend and prove.
These "famous teachers" regardless of their true identity, online education and training institutions may violate advertising laws.
Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Educational Sciences, told the reporter of the Rule of Law Daily that due to the over-normal capital investment, institutions that originally relied on the sales of course products to obtain returns were unable to compete in the same market with institutions that relied on large amounts of financing to obtain returns. More online education institutions are also being squeezed to seek investment.
When more and more online education institutions have this kind of demand, their nature has to change: education is getting weaker and weaker and capital is getting stronger.
Cheng Shiping, a professor at the School of Education of Renmin University of China, believes that education has an industrial nature but is not equivalent to an industry. After the over-industrialization of basic online education, some online institutions ignore the relevant regulations of the education industry. People criticized also preschool education and compulsory education. online education.
The "burning money" model is the inevitable logic of the influx of capital to the education market, and it is a kind of destruction to the laws of education itself.
Management is not clear
Regulatory problems need to be resolved
In December 2020, the "2020 Education Industry Development Report" released by Tianyancha showed that in the first 10 months, my country added 82,000 online education companies, accounting for approximately 17.3% of the entire education industry. The total number of online education institutions The number has exceeded 230,000.
In the face of the booming emerging industry of online education, how to regulate has become an important issue.
Zhang Na (pseudonym), a parent who lives in Haidian District, Beijing, told the reporter of Rule of Law Daily that she spent tens of thousands of yuan on a two-year course last year, but she did not expect the educational institution to run away, and the money has not been refunded.
"I also know that the country has relevant regulations on pre-charging, but the more you buy, the more training institutions will give you more hours and red envelopes, which will save you money. I think this is a relatively well-known institution, so I didn't consider that much."
In July 2019, the Ministry of Education and relevant departments issued the "Implementation Opinions on Regulating Off-campus Online Training", which put forward clear requirements for the investigation and rectification, filing review, and supervision mechanism of subject-based off-campus online training. The basic management system of training.
In accordance with the requirements of the opinion, the Ministry of Education instructs the provincial education administrative departments to combine local conditions and focus on the filing and review of training institutions, training content and training personnel.
However, as far as the current situation is concerned, the difficulty of checking the content of off-campus online training and the difficulty of pre-charging supervision are still two major problems in supervision.
Cheng Shiping believes that the unclear centralized management of online education is the main reason for the difficulty of supervision.
"Normal and formal school education is easy to manage because the management is very clear. Online education belongs to the category of big education. Most of the institutions in this industry are company in nature and are not managed by the education department. It requires market supervision departments, civil affairs departments, etc. Multi-departmental coordinated management, but these departments lack participation, and it is difficult to implement some practices and requirements put forward by the Ministry of Education." Cheng Shiping said.
It is understood that training institutions mainly use self-compiled materials, and many English training institutions use overseas teaching materials. Although local education departments have strengthened the filing and review of training content, it is easy to see the content of the lecture and the content of the filing.
If the parents of the student do not report it, it will be difficult for the regulatory authorities to find out.
One-to-one course supervision is more difficult, especially for some English-language online institutions. Foreign teachers are located abroad. There is currently no policy on online international employment supervision, and the education department lacks effective supervision methods.
Cheng Shiping said that there are still many institutions in the market that use parents' superstitions about various scale tests, and it costs hundreds of yuan to test students. There may be misleading students and parents, and the lack of relevant supervision is also exposed.
Although the country has clearly stipulated that training institutions for elementary and middle school students shall not charge a one-time fee that spans more than 3 months (charged by class hours, each subject shall not charge a one-time fee for more than 60 class hours), but driven by economic interests, some Training institutions still use discounts and cash rebates to induce parents to pay overdue fees, which has led to a series of problems.
In July 2020, CCTV's "March 15" party exposed the false promise of Hixue.com, pointing out that online education institutions have the problem that it is easy to pay and return money.
Afterwards, the online English learning organization Akasuowaijiao.com was exposed to foreign teachers' poor teaching quality and doubtful teaching qualification certification; DaDa English was accused of modifying the course attributes without authorization, and the major courses were shrunk into oral courses.
In October, people from the headquarters of Yousheng Education went to empty buildings. Parents were struggling to refund fees, and teachers' salaries were also delayed.
In December, the online training institution Xuebajun exploded due to poor management.
Cheng Pingyuan said that our current conventional practice is relatively passive. Only during inspections or when the masses report a report, we will investigate which institution encounters a high-voltage line. Normally, there is no way to supervise it, and it is difficult to discover the illegal charges of training institutions in time.
On January 14, 2021, the China Consumers Association released the "Top Ten Consumer Rights Protection Hotspots in 2020".
It emphasizes that in the past year, with the rise of Internet consumption, online education and other "cloud" consumer rights protection have been prominent.
In this regard, the China Consumers Association pointed out that on the one hand, online education platforms need to return to the education standard from capital competition as soon as possible, strengthen industry self-discipline, and provide high-quality services to consumers; on the other hand, relevant departments need to further strengthen administrative supervision and unite consumers. Associations and other relevant social organizations formulate online education service standards, consolidate the protection of the rights protection system, and standardize the development of the online education market.
Strictly investigate violations of laws and regulations
Build a high-quality learning platform
Chu Zhaohui believes that if online education wants to develop healthily and attract students for a long time, it should return to the original intention of education.
Relevant departments and the media should guide online education companies to calm down in the face of financing, and evaluate their real capital needs based on their own size and business volume: the financing volume is risk-controllable for themselves, and they can stick to their own education The quality is to ensure that the people-oriented bottom line is kept to the students in the teaching process, and it will not be inclined to the capital-oriented state.
It is understood that stricter regulatory measures are coming.
The 2021 National Education Work Conference recently held that it is necessary to vigorously manage and rectify off-campus training institutions.
Comprehensive use of economics, rule of law, and administrative means to put forward all-round requirements for training institutions' school conditions, training content, teaching materials and teaching plans, fee management, marketing methods, and teacher qualifications.
Further clarify the responsibilities of market supervision, civil affairs, development and reform, finance, public security and other departments, and strive for major breakthroughs.
Chu Zhaohui believes that the supervision of online education focuses on the standardization of content and the eligibility of quality.
From a practical point of view, teachers in online institutions should “provide evidence and teach” and disclose their qualifications to students and parents. This is a basic and verifiable important link.
The relevant person in charge of the Department of Basic Education of the Ministry of Education stated that the education department will continue to strengthen daily supervision and strict online institution filing and review systems.
By updating the black and white lists, a monitoring and reporting platform has been established to widely accept supervision from all parties.
Strictly investigate and punish training institutions' violations of laws and regulations, and expose them through multiple channels, forming a warning and deterrent, and guiding training institutions to regulate their operations.
Cheng Fangping believes that in addition to supervision, the state should also have more directional measures.
In the Khan Academy in the United States, the courses are played for free all over the world, and the quality is high, and even many elementary and middle school teachers use them directly in class.
We should also establish a good guide. The government can increase subsidies for high-quality online courses that are truly beneficial to the public; companies should also emphasize integrity, increase awareness, and jointly safeguard the dignity of the industry; the media should also guide parents correctly and not train institutions As soon as it is publicized, parents pay the bill.
Cheng Fangping said that school education should also make good use of network resources and build a high-quality and free learning platform at the national level to meet the online learning needs of the majority of students. Only by this can the problem of chaos in online education be solved.
The national elementary and middle school network cloud platform, as a "national team" that guarantees "no suspension of classes", provides important support for the online learning of 180 million elementary and middle school students.
As of December 2020, the cloud platform has reached 2.46 billion views and 2.022 billion visits. Its users cover all provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and 174 countries and regions around the world.
In the next step, the Ministry of Education will continue to optimize and improve the national network cloud platform for primary and secondary schools, enrich high-quality online education and teaching resources, expand platform service functions, and strive to basically form an online education platform system with clear positioning, interconnection, and co-construction and sharing by 2025 , A subject curriculum resource system covering various thematic education and textbook versions, effectively meeting the online learning needs of primary and middle school students.
Cheng Pingyuan believes that since the frequent occurrence of online education chaos is driven by capital, from the national level, this trend should be contained.
From a long-term perspective, the country’s entire evaluation system should be adjusted accordingly to truly achieve quality education and not increase market pressure on students. From a medium-term perspective, experts in various fields such as education and law should be assembled to issue fundamental guidance and guidance policies. Let enterprises take education seriously instead of taking education as an investment direction; in the short term, relevant departments should properly handle the problems that are exposed, such as how to recover money after training institutions run away, and the governance of false advertisements.
Chu Zhaohui said that from the perspective of long-term development, the healthy development of online education requires more educators instead of investors. Investors must become educators to do a good job in online education.
To be too capital-based will inevitably dilute its own educational characteristics; leaving or going against people-oriented, any educational institution, including online education institutions, will not go far.