How do Chinese kids cope with the pandemic? - week 7 Pascal's China Lens

Title: How do Chinese kids cope with the pandemic?
Website: https://www.pascalcoppens.com/

CONTENT: In this video I explain how Chinese kids have coped well with pandemic due to a booming EdTech market, great technical infrastructure and supportive role of government and social fabric of Chinese families.

TRANSCRIPT
'how Chinese kids are coping with the pandemic?'
Here's my answer.
How did Chinese kids cope with the pandemic?
Well, it's interesting to look at how the educational system works in China; there are 500,000 schools, there are 260 million students and 8 million of them are graduating from university every single year.
China has the largest educational system in the world but it's also the oldest from 2000 years ago, it's a very traditional system based on meritocracy, measurements, efficiency, scores and we all know that.
This is typically what Western educators will tell the world; that China's education system does not prepare kids well for creativity and critical thinking, but they're very good at memorizing and so they have their advantage.
But during the crisis, this environment was a benefit.
Why?
Because when you have all that measurement, you basically have a lot of big data
and however having all of that big data means that educational technology companies or EdTech companies could use that data to create these AI algorithms to do online learning and personalized learning online and that was really what took off in China,
the past months from January were booming like crazy.
It's a 54 billion US dollar market in China today, there are 300 million students on EdTech
being active users every single month, that is 1 out of 3 cell phone users, there are 900 million smartphone users in China.
So, a huge amount of people and a huge market.
That means that these Ed technology companies are really doing a big job to help the students cope with the crisis, and most of the students got quite good online learning tools and good support; from tutoring to coding to anything you could imagine, even the teachers had support from many of these tools.
Now the other thing is the social fabric in China, I think we shouldn't forget about that,
parents will not compromise on budget whatsoever for their children;
this is their highest priority in their life and they will spend a huge amount of money, sometimes 5 to 10 times more than Western kids.
That means that parents were helping their children at home because they were stuck at home as well, to cope with homework and to help but they've been used to doing that for many many years before.
So, it's not a new thing or a new normal that they had to get used to, they're used to helping their kids a lot and if they can't do it then they'll have tutors to do it; now these tutors are online.
On top of it, often grandparents live at home with the parents and the children or the child
which means they also could chip in and support their children, so the whole family was supportive of making sure that the child would not get behind on its education.
That's the social fabric that it has, China has this very strong and it's been like that for 2000 years.
On top of that, the government takes care of the children because they understand that education is critical for China and together with innovation to make China go outside of this middle gap that they're so worried about.
And the Chinese government were helping the poor and remote areas with 4G/5G, tablets,
with everything possible.
So, I'm not saying some Chinese kids did not have the same situation a lot of kids in the West had; a slower getting used to this new normal, but they coped quite well with the new normal.
One big difference on top of that is that once they went back to school, by May it was about 40%, by September it should be every Chinese, what you see now and what you did see in June is that the regulation in schools were still very very strict.
They had to wash their hands, everybody was wearing a mask in class, before you go into school you have to take your temperature and get shown a green QR Code that shows you're safe, there's a lot of regulation. Distance in the canteen, when they were eating they had to bring their own food, they couldn't just get food from the canteen and so on.
So, the environment is really helping these children to not feel like this is a big new normal
and I think we can learn a lot from the educational system and how they coped with this crisis, and learn a lot from the schools and the regulations as well as the EdTech coming out of China right now.

KEYWORDS
Pascal Coppens, China, innovation, trends, keynote, speaker, public speaker, edtech, pandemic, education, chinese schools
ABOUT PASCAL COPPENS:
Website: http://www.pascalcoppens.com
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Видео How do Chinese kids cope with the pandemic? - week 7 Pascal's China Lens канала Pascal Coppens