Yuanfudao's headquarters in Beijing Photo: VCG

Beijing has steadily pushed forward reform of after-school training institutions, with the number of registered curriculum-related tutoring providers falling from 1,428 to 545 as of Monday, a reduction of 61.8 percent, an official from Beijing Municipal Education Commission said on Wednesday.

Liu Yuhui, the director from Beijing Municipal Education Commission said that as of October 22, Beijing's 1,016 offline unlicensed tutoring institutions have all been shut down, with the city's 215 online unlicensed training institutions reduced to 50, a decrease of 76.7 percent. The commission, together with China's cyberspace regulator, will continue to address remaining online unlicensed training institutions, Liu noted.

Beijing has established a special management platform, which has identified and notified more than 200 institutions and imposed maximal fines on a number of non-compliant companies. 

According to Liu, Beijing has 52 online curriculum-related training institutions on record, among which six have taken the initiative to cancel their online curriculum-related tutoring business, nine have stopped online training, 20 have committed to stop by early December, and the remaining 17, have submitted applications for approval.

Chinese authorities have been strengthening supervision of off-campus training programs and cracking down on the private tutoring sector since July, after the Ministry of Education rolled out the so-called "double reduction" policy in a bid to ease the burden and stress felt by students. 

China's education authority released a set of guidelines on Monday to identify and classify qualified programs for off-campus training institutions that provide tutorials for students from first to ninth grade -- the compulsory education period.

The newly opened Beijing Stock Exchange (BSE) also issued a statement on November 12 stating that enterprises engaged in preschool education or curriculum-related training are not able to get listed on the bourse. 

Global Times