Beijing improves PE assessments, online tutoring

Beijing will carry out a series of measures to improve students' physical health and enhance education equality by providing more choices for the young, the city government said on Dec 9.

Beijing Municipal Education Commission spokesman Li Yi told a news conference that adjustments will be made to physical education tests during compulsory education.

"The authority will add more progress assessments for PE courses, aiming to encourage children to start physical exercises at an earlier age, on a regular basis and insist on doing it," he said.

There will also be more choices for students during their final tests. They will be able to choose four sports from a list of 22-including running, jump-rope, standing long jump, table tennis, badminton, swimming and gymnastics-for their final on-site tests, with 14 sports newly added to the list.

"After the adjustments, it will be easier for students to get higher or even full scores during their PE tests," Li said. "We have taken students' interests, individual differences and fairness into consideration when making the adjustments."

The commission will also establish an online platform for junior high school students to have tutoring courses after school, a move to bring high-quality educational resources to all students in the capital, it announced on Wednesday.

The project will start this month, covering all the city's public junior high schools, which have around 330,000 students.

Tutoring courses in nine subjects-including Chinese, math, English, chemistry and history-will be given online between 6 pm and 9 pm on weekdays.

"It's not a totally new measure," Li said. "In fact, Beijing had already launched such an education service in 2016 in order to provide good education resources to students in the outer suburbs."

During the first half of this year, junior high students in districts including Tongzhou, Yanqing, Huairou, Miyun and Pinggu have received tutoring from the platform.

Li said it's not merely a tutoring project, and is not compulsory.

"Based on internet technology, we want to provide support for students who have a greater interest in certain subjects with high-quality educational resources from our teachers," he said.

Students can choose teachers they like for the tutoring and there is an evaluation system for students to give feedback. The platform also follows strict rules on tutoring time and content.

The government will pay teachers who provide tutoring services on the system based on the evaluations given by the students.

Zhao Xing, a mother with one child in primary school and another in junior high, said the free tutoring will save the family lots of money.

"More importantly, even if we would like to pay, it's hard to get courses from some well-known teachers," she said. "The new measure has narrowed the gap between kids from different schools in terms of educational resources."