Bai Yunfeng discussed "The Future of the Sharing Economy" at the Boao Forum for Asia: TAL will share quality educational resources with more children

BEIJING, March 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The 2019 Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference was held in Boao, Hainan, China from March 26th to 29th with the theme of "Shared Future, Concerted Action, Common Development". On March 28, Bai Yunfeng, President of TAL Education Group was invited to the session themed around "The Future of the Sharing Economy" at the annual conference where he shared views on the current development of the future trends of the sharing economy with representatives from leading companies including Chen Chi, co-founder and CEO of Xiaozhu Short-term Accommodation (xiaozhu.com); Ma Jia, Global VP and President for China of Booking.com; Ma Ming, President of Grab Group of Singapore; Joël Ruet, President of the Bridge Tank, etc.

Bai Yunfeng said that technology is driving the transformation of educational models. TAL is committed to the mission of promoting educational progress through science and technology. TAL will now use all the means at its disposal for a longer period of time to come and share quality education resources with more kids and let them enjoy better and fairer education.

Consumption upgrade boosts demand for education

Sharing economy brings broad prospects

Basic education in China has made tremendous progress over the past 40 years. The increase in Chinese family's consumption has led to strong demands among hundreds of millions of middle school and primary school students for quality basic educational resources.

In this respect, Bai Yunfeng pointed out that the current education still faces two core problems. First is unbalanced distribution of educational resources; second is the scarcity of quality educational resources. The sharing economy is a promising tool to address such problems. "In the past 16 years, TAL has made heavy investments in education research, teachers and technological development, but that is still far from meeting the strong demands of Chinese families for basic education. The sharing economy has expanded the space to increase the need for basic education and its emergence is actually a result of the progress and accumulation of basic education".

"In this context, more forms of education are taking shape, in particular, great changes have happened to knowledge acquisition thanks to online education." Bai said that an organic integration is forming between the sharing economy and education. "In the past 3-5 years, the compound annual growth rate of online education in China is much higher than offline education; the development potential of online education is also much greater than that of traditional education." The Sharing economy + Education is facing broad room for growth.

Education innovation supported by science and technology

The nature of character-building remains unchanged

The Internet catalyzed the arrival of the sharing economy and is addressing the unbalance in educational resources. Frontier technologies such as AI and big data are creating more new business forms of education. "The future of the sharing economy, is driven by technology, it will change the ways of connection and production relationship," said Bai Yunfeng.

Since its founding, TAL has been investing heavily in science and technology and talent to develop personalized education. Bai announced that in the past 3 years, TAL has spent over 1 billion yuan on science and technology and R&D. It has thousands of engineers and researchers working on products, technology and educational researchers who keep developing new technologies and new models of education. 

Bai believed that the sharing economy hasn't changed the nature of education. "AI has separated teaching from cultivating. Teaching is AI+ which extends the reach of quality educational resources via technology. But speaking of cultivating, people will still play a pivotal role. No matter how technology may develop or how the teaching methods may vary, the nature of education for character-building will never change." 

"These days, the way that children learn knowledge should change. Education while keeping its invariables, should also transform and innovate." Bai said that TAL will remain true to its mission of promoting educational progress through science and technology and let more children learn in a more scientific way through studying the science of learning.

State regulation promotes orderly industrial development

There is a common aspiration for fairer and better education.

The state has introduced a series of laws and regulations to regulate the growth of the education industry. These forceful steps have set a threshold for market access, ensured accountability of companies, and put in place a comprehensive management mechanism which has laid a good foundation for the sound and sustainable development of the education sector.

Bai Yunfeng commented that with the strict oversight on the quality and process of traditional economies in the B2C model and the exploration of the emerging economies on the sharing economy, the policy restrictions and regulation of relevant authorities over the education sector is aimed at realizing fairer and better education.

Last year, TAL has announced its redefinition-guide strategic transformation via smart education and open platform to openly share quality educational resources to the whole sector and whole society on a long-term basis. Bai Yunfeng said that in the era of the sharing economy, we hope to vitalize each independent education cell unit, let more people get educational resources that used to be inaccessible in a more efficient and cheaper way, and make the whole educational sector a community with a shared future, with concerted action and common development."

"With explorations into the share economy, TAL hopes to serve the public education, help grow the private education, empower the industry with products, and provide services to more Chinese families and students." Bai also promised that TAL will continue to work in compliance with state policies, shoulder its duties in improving the industrial environment, continue to develop new growth drivers of the sharing economy, and contribute to the ambitious goal of China to realize fairer and better education.

SOURCE TAL Education Group

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