Interview with Channel News Asia: On China’s Private Education Ban

Arti­cle Pub­lished On: 7 August 2021

The date was 24 July 2021. The Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty made an earth-shat­ter­ing announce­ment that it would ban all forms of pri­vate tutor­ing in the coun­try. This deci­sion put many edu­ca­tion com­pa­nies in Chi­na to the sword. Think Teach Acad­e­my, which has a pres­ence in Shang­hai and Bei­jing, was no doubt affect­ed as well.

In an inter­view with Chan­nel News Asia, co-founder Algene Tan shared that the acad­e­my had to think quick­ly on its feet. In less than a week, it flew all its teach­ers back to Sin­ga­pore and moved all its tutor­ing in Chi­na online. While the acad­e­my still has a phys­i­cal office in Shang­hai, it remod­elled its busi­ness in Chi­na from tutor­ing to con­sult­ing. In Chi­na, only uni­ver­si­ty coun­selling is offered. Should stu­dents want to con­tin­ue attend­ing lessons, they can still do so online.

Our stu­dents have always been loy­al. As a tes­ta­ment to our effec­tive way of teach­ing, every stu­dent of ours opt­ed to switch to online lessons. The most amaz­ing part was that results in the IGCSE and IBDP exam­i­na­tions were not affect­ed at all.