Students flock online for better English

A multi-million takeover underlines the massive growth market in education

Zheng Renqiang is surely one of China's highest-earning English teachers.

He teaches IELTS (International English Language Testing System) training programs less than 20 hours a month - but the 32-year-old says he can make a staggering 10 million yuan ($1.61 million) a year.

That may sound unbelievable, but the Internet is what makes such a salary possible. Armed with just a computer, a camera and a headset microphone, more than 1,000 students are able to sit in on his cyber classes, during which Zheng passes on his tips on how to score highly on IELTS tests - exams which often determine whether young Chinese students can gain places to study abroad, or not.

Zheng is enjoying such wealth because of what has now become a booming online educational wave in China.

IELTS teachers

His operation (which involves himself and just 10 well-recognized IELTS teachers across China), was bought over in December and merged with the Guangzhou-based 100.com - an online education platform owned by the Nasdaq-listed YY Inc, a Chinese-language, live video-streaming platform - in a deal worth hundreds of millions of yuan.

"What I can (confirm about the price) is the number was beyond my expectations," says Zheng, who is now deputy-manager of 100.com. "I'm clearly happy, but until that moment I really hadn't realized how much my life was about to be changed."

Zheng says agreeing to team up with 100.com was more about how technology could be used to optimize the experience of online education, rather than the money.

The man who grew up in rural China has taught English for around a decade in some of China's best-known English training organizations, including the New Oriental Education& Technology Group Inc. It was only a year ago that he decided to move his business online.

His teaching channel, now joined with YY's live video-streaming platform which has 600 million registers, is enrolling up to 4,000 students a month.

At the end of last year, New Oriental - one of China's most successful and well-known English language schools - had 703 brick-and-mortar schools and teaching centers across China, with an average enrollment of 193,800 a month. But Zheng says his online success proves that networks of expensive teaching real estate could well be a thing of the past in China.

"Many of those who were skeptical about online education say that teaching in cyberspace lacks personal communication because students can only see their teachers through screens.

"But in my experience, students who are often shy to ask questions in class, especially, are a lot more proactive in online sessions because no one knows them in real life," he says.

He says that traditional educational models are also falling behind the times because they teach the same content to large groups of students, "but it is so important to teach different students differently".

"By focusing on individual weaknesses, we can help students achieve much stronger scores in a relatively short period of time, rather than having them waste their time being forced to listen to things they've already mastered."

The technology team at 100.com is working with Zheng to develop a new, still-secret, "intellectual-teaching software", which he says will optimize the online education experience using what he calls a "testing first, and teaching later" model.

The product, expected to be released in two months, is based on feedback gleaned from a vast number of mock IELTS tests. After identifying a student's strengths and weaknesses, he says, the software will automatically tailor-make individual learning processes.

According to figures from the Internet consultancy iResearch Group, massive capital investment is pouring into China's online education sector, with the number of online learners expected to double from 67.2 million in 2013, to 120 million by 2017.

Online presence

Many traditional education organizations, it says, have been anxiously boosting their online presence in order to thrive in the Internet era, but Zheng remains unconcerned.

"They have invested a lot in their offline educational facilities, and that side of their business will inevitably be hurt, the more they have to invest online," he says, insisting that 100.com is still streets ahead of the competition.

Liu Yujun, the head of 100.com, says it bought Zheng's operation because of its rich experience in online education management, abundant teaching resources, and its reputation of knowing just what it takes to get students to understand what is involved in passing an IELTS exam.

Li Huihui, who recently spent 12,800 yuan to sign up for one of Zheng's VIP courses, says studying online offers much more flexibility.

"In the old days if you wanted to be taught by famous teachers such as Zheng you had to go to Beijing or Shanghai because you could never find any good IELTS teacher in second-tier cities," she says.

"Online, I can learn whenever and wherever I like, and save money on transportation and accommodation."

Chen Sijia, who just finished a 10-day IELTS training session at a New Oriental school in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, has the opposite view.

Face-to-face contact with the teacher and classmates is vital, she says.