Recently, the "TAL 2018 Corporate Social Responsibility Report" was officially released in Beijing. The report systematically elaborated on TAL's comprehensive social responsibility, sincere dedication, and innovative practices in teaching, research, technology, openness, sharing, and public welfare over the past year. In particular, the report reviewed TAL's continuous efforts to provide high-quality education for every child.

Cover of the "TAL 2018 Corporate Social Responsibility Report"

Readers noticed that the report was organized and written by TAL Education Research Institute for the first time. Therefore, the release of the report also marks that the technology education company TAL Education now has its own authoritative think tank - The TAL Academy of Education.

Since its establishment, TAL has been committed to using smart education and open platforms as the main structure, using quality education and extracurricular tutoring as the carrier, to serve public education and assist private education on a global scale. TAL attaches great importance to the use of advanced concepts and technology worldwide to promote innovation and progress in educational products, so that everyone can enjoy fair and quality education and achieve their life dreams. To continue fulfilling the above mission, TAL needs a strong think tank to support it. It is crucial to establish a high-level expert team that focuses on cutting-edge, technology, theory, advisory, service development, and benefiting teachers and students.

It is reported that the establishment of this research institute responded to the background demand. The purpose of the institute is to rely on TAL’s 16 years of education practice experience, diverse education technology products, and massive basic data to focus on key issues such as improving education quality, promoting educational fairness, reducing educational burdens, innovating education technology, and driving industry development through a forward-looking, open, cooperative, and internationalized research model, to gather wisdom from all sides, make contributions to industry progress, and promote education development.

In recent years, TAL has been widely recognized for its excellent work, continually listening to, meeting, and surpassing customer needs in providing reliable content, products, and services to users of different countries, regions, income levels, and education levels across the globe. At the same time, its continuous exploration in promoting the joint progress of the education industry and society is also commendable.

As early as 2014, TAL established the "Future Stars" entrepreneurship camp, helping more early-stage entrepreneurs in the education field to become responsible and highly innovative successful entrepreneurs. Since 2017, TAL, together with China Development Foundation, Beijing Normal University, and other institutions, has jointly held the GES Future Education Conference for years, successfully fulfilling the glorious mission of "connecting Chinese education with the world".

This year, TAL has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with UNESCO to jointly promote the "Artificial Intelligence Promoting Future Education" program. Despite the low-key launch of the TAL Academy of Education, it has still received a warm welcome and high praise from industry experts and practitioners.

In interviews, many experts in the field of education and public policy believe that the low-key, responsible, and steady style of TAL will continue in this sincere think tank, and the upcoming heavy research results will be another practical step to promote more fair and high-quality education.

Scene of "Future Stars" and Future Education Conference activities and visit of UNESCO to TAL

The new research institute consists of the Institutes of Education Policy Research, Education Communication Research, Education Technology Research, Education Public Welfare Research, Education Theory Innovation Research, and the Case and Data Center. The "Five Institutes and One Center" have already started formal operation, and the International and Comparative Education Research Center, which is being built in collaboration with several world-class educational policy and innovation practice research institutions, will meet everyone this year.

The President of the Institute is also the Public Affairs Director of TAL, Yi-ting Million. According to her introduction, the Institute has appointed well-known experts, scholars, and senior predecessors from various fields such as education, technology, media, psychology, and neuroscience to serve as members of the Advisory Committee, Academic Committee, and International Advisory Committee.

It is reported that the honorary high-level advisers to the first Advisory Committee include Ta Xi-ping, the Honorary Chairman of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Association, a national supervisor consultant, a member of the National Advisory Committee for Education, a member of the Standing Committee of the Eleventh and Twelfth National People's Congress, the former Deputy Chairman of the Central Committee of the Democratic League, and the President of the China Private Education Association, and Gu Yong-hua, former Secretary of the Secretariat of the China National Journalists Association.

A year ago, at 4:30 pm on March 2, at a press conference of the Thirteenth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference held at the press hall on the first floor of the Great Hall of the People. The conference spokesman, Wang Guo-qing, spoke about "homework" saying, "I think everyone here is familiar with the song 'Row the Boat'. There's a line in the song: 'After finishing a day's homework, we can have fun.' I hear people around me say, some children will do homework until 9, 10, or even 11 o'clock at night. After finishing the homework, where can they have fun, where can they row the boat?" On that day and for some time afterwards, reducing the burden on children became a widely discussed topic.

Ms. Million, President of the Institute, is very honored to have Mr. Wang Guo-qing. the spokesman of the Twelfth and Thirteenth National Congresses of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, serve as the Honorary President of the TAL Education Research Institute. She said that Mr. Wang, a senior journalist and cross-cultural communication expert, had served as Deputy Director of China International Radio, Deputy Director of the Information Office of the State Council, and Chairman of the Media Literacy Training Base for National Leaders, among other roles. Mr. Wang, with his international outlook and communication experience, will lead the research institute to become a high-level, international think tank. Mr. Wang's multi-faceted attention to education and deep thinking will greatly benefit us!

Yi-ting Million, Public Affairs Director of TAL, presents a letter of appointment to Wang Guo-qing, Deputy Director of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, appointing him the Honorary President of the TAL Education Research Institute

"Everyone is talking about 'reducing the burden', don't just reduce the content and difficulty with a broad brush. Instead, it's about reducing the time wasted on ineffective, low-efficiency, and unnecessary repetitive learning," said Honorary President Wang Guo-qing at the first expert meeting of the institute, "Our research should serve to solve these real problems. We have to realistically find the real root cause of why some children can't bear the burden, in order to prescribe the right medicine to solve the problem. We must also introduce advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence into future education, so as to improve learning efficiency and shorten learning time. Only in this way can children have the opportunity to 'row the boat' and have a blast."