New Oriental Photo: CFP

 

Private tutoring agencies in China are undergoing business transformation to switch to new frontiers, including specialized, vocational education for adults, and compiling training courses for parents, after the government introduced sweeping measures clamping down on China's private education industry.

NASDAQ-listed New Oriental has launched a number of study centers to promote courses relating to quality education that will be joined by parents, which reportedly will offer training courses such as family education and parenting methods, domestic business news portal yicai.com reported.

The training courses will not teach parents traditional courses such as math or English language, according to staff members from the New Oriental in Beijing.

New Oriental responded on Thursday claiming that media reports "misunderstood" its position. The company has been providing family education and guidance since it was established in 2008. Each New Oriental branch already contains a family education center department. 

Other private tutoring institutions have been accelerating the introduction of new course material focusing on higher quality, and specialized education. Live course platform Yuanfudao has launched a new brand targeting science education for children, with some other platforms switching to non-curriculum- subjects based tutoring such as art. 

Agencies include online English training agency VIPKID have also shifted their business to adult education, and new courses including VIPKID adult class will be launched soon, a staffer at VIPKID told the Global Times on Thursday. 

Global Times