Wen/Wang Feng
The online education standardization process has entered a substantive stage. Recently, the Department of Education of Guangdong Province announced the list of online discipline off campus training institutions "for review".
As of December 1, including XRS, Homework, Penguin Coaching Leader education 14 online education institutions, including the company, are "proposed to pass the examination and approval", and will obtain the online discipline training school running license.
These institutions are all from the white list of 50 online discipline training institutions previously published by Guangdong Province.
Another gathering place of online education is Beijing. There are 52 online discipline training institutions registered in Beijing, of which 17 apply for "preparation for reform and approval". The reporter of the 21st Century Business Herald has learned that the final list will be announced recently, and the number of licensed institutions is far less than 17.
Among the 14 institutions to be licensed in Guangdong Province, there are 7 non-profit institutions providing compulsory education discipline training; Seven for-profit institutions, including XRS, Homework Group and Leader Education, provide high school discipline training.
The winter vacation and spring enrollment for out of school training have started. The 21st Century Business Herald reporter learned that the winter vacation classes for quality training have begun to register for fees; Some spring courses of discipline training have begun to register students' intention to continue reporting. In order to cope with the lower government guidance price, the method of increasing class hours is adopted to maintain the revenue scale.
It is worth noting that the application form for the formal establishment of off campus online discipline training institutions in Guangdong Province clearly includes the column of training scale, which has been pre filled as 20000 person times/year. Is this a regulatory signal? At present, the number of students in the head online education company has reached one million.
High school business can be registered as for-profit
According to the policy of "double reduction", the online discipline training institutions that were originally filed were changed to the approval system, that is, "preparation for change and approval".
Six departments, including the Ministry of Education, issued a notice in September this year requiring that the "preparation for reform and approval" should be completed before the end of 2021, and no enrollment and fees should be charged before that.
According to the work plan of "Preparation, Reform and Review" of Guangdong Province, online discipline training institutions in the compulsory education stage must be registered as non-profit institutions, and they can be registered as non-profit institutions or for-profit institutions in the high school stage.
The most eye-catching ones in the public list are XRS, Homework Group and Leader Education. The first two are headquartered in Beijing, while the latter is headquartered in Shanghai. However, according to the territorial management principle, the business of relevant operating entities in Guangdong Province shall be approved by Guangdong.
XRS in Guangdong "prepare for reform and review" are XRS 1-to-1 and VIPX. XRS one-to-one is a new brand integrated in 2021, formerly known as the offline one-to-one business AIZhiKang, and later TAL One to one merger of its online one-on-one brand Dahai. VIPX is a one-on-one brand of online foreign teachers under TAL and a product benchmarking VIPKID. However, its official website has been renamed as XRS Online Course.
According to the work plan of "preparation, reform and review" of Guangdong Province, these two products will only carry out high school business in the future.
The same is true for the "preparation, modification and approval" products under the "Homework Group" and "Leader Education". The former's business is called Homework Group High School, and the website ICP filing was just completed on November 22; The latter business is called Headmaster New, which is a one-to-one and one to many high school online brand under Headmaster Education.
(Source of online discipline training institutions that have been "prepared for reform and approval" in Guangdong Province: Department of Education of Guangdong Province) High school is the doubtful area of "double reduction". The "double reduction" policy only stipulates that the management of discipline training institutions for ordinary high school students should be implemented by reference.
Now it seems that high school training institutions have not been registered as non-profit institutions in accordance with the "double reduction" policy. An insider told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that this may be because off campus training institutions are defined as private schools. Since the Law on the Promotion of Private Education and its implementing regulations do not prohibit private high schools from being non-profit institutions, and local authorities have begun to approve according to this, off campus training for high schools should not be limited to non-profit institutions.
However, a number of local education department executives told the 21st Century Business Herald that subject training in senior high schools will also be subject to government guidance prices, and it is prohibited to make up classes on weekends, winter and summer vacations.
Both the online ape tutoring courses and zebras under ape tutoring have been included in the white list of Guangdong Province, but they have not been included in the public list of "preparation for revision". Ape Counseling will apply for disciplinary license in Beijing, where its headquarter is located.
Non profit operation risk
Compulsory education discipline training is the top priority of "double reduction". What will the newly established non-profit organization look like after the "preparation, reform and review"?
The name suffix of non-profit organizations approved by Guangdong Province is "Training Center". tencent Penguin Counseling will be transformed into a non-profit organization. Its operating entity was Shenzhen Tencent Education Technology Co., Ltd., and later it will be changed into Guangdong Penguin Counseling Education and Training Center.
Before the start of the "preparation for reform and review" in Guangdong Province, it sent letters to the institutions twice to remind them of risks.
These risks include no profit, no listing, time limit, price limit, etc. The school running license of a non-profit institution will clearly indicate the words "non-profit". The investment of its start-up funds is of a donation nature. Even if the institution terminates running the school, the remaining property cannot be returned to the sponsor, but is used for other non-profit institutions to run the school.
The progress of online institutions in "preparing for reform and review" is significantly slower than that of offline institutions in "replacing business with non business". For example, each district of Beijing has approved dozens of offline discipline training institutions, but so far no online institutions have been approved.
The above insiders told 21st Century Business Herald that the reason is that the approval of online discipline training institutions covers a wider range. In addition to the school running license issued by the Education Commission and the non-profit organization registration certificate issued by the Civil Affairs Bureau, online institutions also need to obtain ICP filing, telecommunications business operation license, etc., involving six departments.
"In addition, many of the online institutions in Beijing that are 'ready for reform and approval' are listed companies and need to divest their businesses in advance. However, these work has been completed at present, and the approved list will be announced in the near future," he said.
May control the scale of online institutions
"Double reduction" focuses on the reduction of discipline off campus training. But the question is, will there be unfair competition between offline and online businesses after the reduction?
Offline institutions have limited enrollment scale and high operating costs. The industry has generally believed that after the implementation of the government guidance price, offline discipline training is difficult to have surplus space. It is reported that an entrepreneur of a Beijing education and training institution has calculated the account and can't attend classes in winter, summer and weekend. The income of the institution is basically only 1/4 of the original, and if the class fee is discounted, only 1/8 will remain. Non profit organizations can only reduce costs through layoffs and rent cancellation.
On November 30, Hainan Province solicited opinions on the government guidance price for discipline training, among which the single class hour fee for a class with more than 35 people was only 5 yuan. A person in charge of a local offline training organization in Hainan told the 21st Century Business Herald that this made the organization impossible to survive.
But for online institutions, the theoretical working capacity can be expanded indefinitely, which allows them to withstand certain low prices. In the future, the demand for training is still there. After the number of institutions shrinks seriously, will students rush into online institutions crazily?
The above industry insiders who do not want to be named believe that this will not happen. "The competent department will strictly monitor the student size of online institutions, and may take control measures if it is too large."
It is worth noting that the application form for the formal establishment of off campus online discipline training institutions in Guangdong Province clearly includes the column of training scale, which has been pre filled as 20000 person times/year. Is this a regulatory signal? At present, the number of students in the head online education company has reached one million.
Online education is about to start enrollment
All local "preparation for reform and approval" institutions are from the previously approved record list. There are 52 and 50 registration lists in Beijing and Guangdong respectively.
Now looking back at this list, the online education industry that used to "burn money" has withered.
Liu Yuhui, director of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Education, said on November 17 that there were 52 online disciplinary education and training institutions registered in Beijing, of which 6 had voluntarily cancelled online disciplinary training business, 9 had stopped online disciplinary training, 20 had promised to stop disciplinary training by the first ten days of December at the latest, and the remaining 17 institutions had submitted applications for "revision".
Among them, the rice online school under VIPKID and GOGOKID under Byte Beat have disappeared from the app store; The website of Giant Cloud Classroom under Giant Education has been unable to open as the parent company explodes; New Oriental New Oriental Online, Oriental Youbo, and Xueda Online School under Xueda Education, a listed company, have officially announced that they will stop K9 business. Some small institutions have stopped operating.
(Coach Jian in the Beijing Filing List has officially announced to stop selling) Some of the remaining institutions have started enrollment in spring. The 21st Century Business Herald reporter learned that an organization has introduced the continuation policy to the old students and solicited their intentions. The courses of the spring semester are arranged from Monday to Friday evening, and the price of a single class hour is less than 30 yuan. However, because the single class hour of the online class is shortened to 30 minutes, and the end time is late to 21 o'clock, this means that the class hour space of the online class is increased.
This organization has only 30 class hours in spring this year, but next year's spring class will increase to 58 class hours. Although the unit price is reduced, the total price has almost remained unchanged.
In addition, almost all online education institutions have launched quality courses, so retaining users of subject courses will hopefully guide quality courses. The above institutions have launched bundled packages of subject and quality courses, with greater incentives.
Others have canceled the subject courses in primary school and directly asked the old students to continue to report the quality courses in the Cold Spring Festival Couplet. The new quality courses are related to the previous subject courses to a certain extent, for example, students in Chinese courses are recommended to continue to report on humanities and aesthetic education, and students in math courses are recommended to continue to report on science and intelligence. Another organization that is good at English recommends English class students to continue to report English story meetings.
Except for different contents, the price and class time of these new courses are the same as usual.
