On July 24th, the 7th International Symposium on Anti-Poverty and Child Development, guided by the Development Research Center of the State Council and hosted by the China Development Research Foundation, was held in Beijing.

The symposium, with the theme of "Investing in Children - Achieving Sustainable Prosperity and Development", aimed to share China's experiences in poverty reduction and child development with the international community, and to better collate and summarize the experiences of various countries to promote international cooperation in child development and poverty reduction. Ma Jiantang, the Party Secretary of the Development Research Center of the State Council, Li Wei, the Director of the Population, Resources and Environment Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the Chairman of the China Development Research Foundation, and Liu Zhenmin, the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, delivered speeches. Li Bin, Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, delivered a keynote speech.

As a representative of a technology and education enterprise, Dr. Wan Yiting, Executive President of TAL Education Group and Executive Chairman of the TAL Education Foundation, attended the symposium and shared his views on the topic of "Education Informatization and Education Equity in the Context of the Pandemic" with Chinese and foreign guests including Guo Yan, Director of the National Center for Education of Ethnic Minorities of the Ministry of Education, Andreas Schleicher, Director of the Directorate for Education and Skills of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (who initiated and oversaw the Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA), and Yi Guodong, Principal of Chengdu No. 7 High School.

Dr. Wang Yiting (second from right) shares five TAL stories of "education during the epidemic"

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pneumonia has been a major test for education systems around the world. The "Report on China's Education Technology before and after the  Outbreak of COVID-19" released by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission shows that China quickly switched from offline to online teaching, and the "government-enterprise collaboration" model of China's education solution has become a global model. Some technology and education enterprises have demonstrated advantages in artificial intelligence and other technologies.

Dr. Wan Yiting introduced that TAL Education Group responded immediately to the national call of "no suspension of classes despite school suspension", and provided free live-streamed classes covering all subjects for primary and secondary school students across the country through its products such as Xueersi Online School, Xueersi Online, and LiBu. At the peak, more than 60 million students watched the live-streamed classes every day. Then he shared five small stories about the "education battle against the epidemic".

The first story was "The Live-streamed Class That Helped a Student Turn the Tide". A senior high school student named Aniu Shibu from Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, could only study at home due to the delayed start of the school term. Through the free live-streamed classes of Xueersi Online School. He was exposed to many new learning methods he had never heard of before. He didn't expect that many knowledge points he had previously found difficult to understand could be mastered so quickly. With hard work, his English score in the college entrance examination was nearly 90 points, doubling his usual test scores, and he was eventually admitted to Chengdu University of Technology as he wished.

The second story Wan Yiting brought was "The AI Teacher That Can't Be Taken Away". In the Daliangshan area, thousands of miles away from Beijing, more than 80,000 students are learning Mandarin through the "AI Teacher Mandarin Teaching System" independently developed by Xueersi Online School. The system integrates a large number of local commonly used words and presents them in the form of "pictures + Yi-Chinese bilingual pronunciation", reducing the psychological distance of Yi children to learning Mandarin. "A local education department official told us that the voices of these AI teachers that can't be taken away can be heard everywhere in the rural schools of the area. Hearing the children's standard Mandarin with a cute accent, it feels full of hope," he said.

Then he narrated the third story - "From 'Blood Transfusion' to 'Blood Production'". TAL Education Group and the schools in Jimunai County, Xinjiang, have been working together to provide classes in the form of "dual-teacher classrooms", continuously delivering high-quality educational resources to this border town. TAL Education Group has also selected and trained a group of "seed teachers" in the local area, promoting the growth of more local teachers, and the educational assistance has gradually shifted from "blood transfusion" to "blood production". During the epidemic, Teacher Cheng, a national-level psychological counselor from TAL Education Group, conducted mental health training for over 900 teachers in Jimunai County through "ntelligent Classroom Cloud", helping them better cope with the psychological changes of students during the epidemic.

The fourth story is "The Fun Start Program". During the epidemic, TAL Education Group provided training for hundreds of rural kindergarten teachers in Bijie, Guizhou Province through live streaming technology and provided a batch of self-developed teaching toys to local central kindergartens. The children were very fond of the customized scientific literacy activities. To solve the problem of insufficient supply, TAL Education Group's technicians also developed a teaching aid circulation mini-program to improve the turnover rate, significantly enriching the learning activities of local children after kindergartens resumed classes.

The fifth story shared by Wan Yiting is "Using Technology to Keep Hope Online". To enable children in remote areas to enjoy high-quality educational resources in one stop, the TAL Education Foundation upgraded the "Hope Online" APP multiple times during the epidemic and provided it for free to children in remote rural areas across China. "Hope Online" aggregates various types of high-quality educational video resources, which are lively and interesting, covering all age groups. There is also a teacher version that provides a large number of rich courseware and high-quality teaching materials for rural teachers, assisting and reducing their workload. Up to now, more than 200,000 teachers and students have benefited.

"High-quality technology-based education enterprises can reduce the burden on students and teachers, help the entire society's education supply to be more cost-effective, promote educational equity, and become a beneficial supplement to in-school education," said Wan Yiting.