Internet helps narrow education gap

China Daily Published: 2018-12-15 10:09:09
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Over the past 16 years, 72,000 students from 248 high schools in poverty-stricken areas have attended livestreaming classes simultaneously with one of the best high schools in the nation, the Chengdu No 7 High School.

Students attend a livestreaming class at a middle school in Luquan county in Kunming, Yunnan Province, on November 12, 2018. [File photo: VCG]

Students attend a livestreaming class at a middle school in Luquan county in Kunming, Yunnan Province, on November 12, 2018. [File photo: VCG]

The livestream enables students with poor education resources to have classes, homework and exams simultaneously with mostly middle class peers in the renowned school in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan province.

Wang Hongjie of EASTEDU, operator of the online school, said 88 of the 72,000 students got admission in Tsinghua and Peking universities, the two most prestigious universities in China. Most of the students went on to study in universities.

This is what was described in an article that went viral on WeChat on Thursday. Entitled "The screen that changes children's destiny", the article narrates how a reporter from China Youth Daily witnessed the schooling on the two ends of the livestream, the school in Chengdu and Luquan No 1 School in Yunnan province, nearly 1,000 kilometers away.

Ding Lei, the founder and CEO of NetEase, reposted the article in his WeChat Moments with a post promising that the company will allocate 100 million yuan to support more schools to join the online education mode, "making knowledge flow between classes".

The practice of the Chengdu online school was praised by netizens. Sina Weibo user Sheng Jiao Niu Rou said: "I think this is where the value of the internet lies.”

As China's first distance learning high school, the online school was founded in 2002 by Chengdu No 7 High School and Chengdu EASTEDU Sci-Tech Development Co Ltd.

The operating center of Chengdu EASTEDU Sci-Tech Development Co Ltd sends livestreaming signal to over 200 schools. [File photo: VCG]

The operating center of Chengdu EASTEDU Sci-Tech Development Co Ltd sends livestreaming signal to over 200 schools. [File photo: VCG]

Luquan county in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, is a State-level poverty-stricken county dozens of kilometers away from Kunming. Due to proximity to the provincial capital, all eligible students find a way to go to a high school in Kunming, with those left behind mostly have poor academic performance.

Then the vicious cycle begins. The school performs badly in college entrance exam and in turn gets academically poor students.

At first, the freshmen of Luquan high school found it difficult to catch up with classes in Chengdu. Wang Yiqing, top student in her town's high school entrance exam, failed all mid-term tests except Chinese language. She could not understand the English courses except for the three-minute English song before the class began.

This was the case for most students in livecast classes. After tests, the classrooms had students in tears.

The livestream also met with setbacks from teachers at first, with teachers feeling looked down upon. Some teachers tore textbooks in protest, others came late to class or asked for a whole week leave and told students to watch livestream themselves.

With students performing better and better, the school began attracting the 12 students who had been enrolled by a Kunming school. After more than a decade, Luquan for the first time saw the return of good students.

With education improving and students coming back, some parents also returned. The county is kind of revitalized. Even the housing prices have risen, according to a local official.

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