Photo: Zuoyebang

Zuoyebang, a Chinese leading K12 online education platform, is gaining more recognition from students, with 7.8 million students attending paid online courses this summer, a year-on-year increase of 390 percent, according to a statement sent to the Global Times Monday.

Among those students, more than 1.71 million chose courses with no discounts, a surge of at least 350 percent on a yearly basis. More than 67 percent of these students come from Zuoyebang's Super App, which greatly reduces the cost of recruiting students, the company said. 

The company attributed the growth to its continuously improving education quality and its large student base. 

According to data from Zuoyebang, more than 170 million monthly active users gain knowledge and skills from its different channels including apps, with the cumulative number of learners reaching 800 million. 

Among the cumulative total of students, more than 20 million have chosen courses taught via livestreaming. The number of students who paid for courses without discount increased tenfold in the last two years.

"Apart from the user scale, we continue to improve user experience, and pay close attention to students' progress, endeavoring to achieve long-term, healthy and sustainable development," the company told the Global Times.  

For instance, both lecturers and teaching assistants help students truly understand the subjects covered by the courses, and video courses with playback services help students get a clearer understanding if they find something confusing, said the company. 

Zuoyebang, headquartered in Beijing, has set up units in China's 11 relatively developed cities such as Shijiazhuang in North China's Hebei Province, Jinan in East China's Shandong Province, Wuhan in Central China's Hubei Province, and Xian in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province. The company, with more than 18,000 employees, is expected to recruit another 10,000 people this year despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Notably, more than 60 percent of students are from relatively underdeveloped regions that may lack education resources. The company provides opportunities for students in poor regions to get better scores for a series of examinations like gaokao, China's national college entrance examination, and then increase their competiveness in schools or workplace. 

Zuoyebang has always been committed to developing education with new technologies and helping China's education reach a new level with the development of digitalization, intelligence, personalization and inclusion, said the company.

Global Times