From October 17th to 20th, with the approval of the State Council and the strong support of the Ministry of Education, the 20th China International Education Annual Conference organized by the China Education Association for International Exchange was held in Beijing.

The theme of this year's annual meeting was "Education 2035—Dialogues on the future of the world." Leaders of government departments at home and abroad, as well as leaders and representatives from various fields of industry, academia, and research, attended the conference.

The Vice President of Public Affairs of TAL Education Group, Wan Yiting, was invited to attend the annual meeting and shared the latest practices of TAL international education cooperation at a forum on the 17th, with the theme of "Sino-foreign cooperation, jointly creating a better education."

Wan Yiting, Vice President of Public Affairs of TAL Education Group, shared TAL's latest practices in international education cooperation.

Rooted in China, embracing the world

Wan Yiting stated that TAL has always insisted on "rooting in China to provide education" and to provide high-quality educational services to Chinese students and families. TAL has introduced programs such as Great Chinese Language Arts to help children understand Chinese history and literature classics, create a strong nationalistic sentiment, and enable them to understand the world by understanding China.

At the same time, TAL has actively embraced the world, from initially introducing textbooks to collaborating on development and research and technology consulting.

To promote wider and higher-level exchanges in the education industry, TAL has been co-hosting the GES Future Education Conference with well-known domestic and foreign institutions since 2017, emphasizing international and technological crossovers. The conference this year also received support from UNESCO and invited heavyweight guests from over 25 countries including the United States and the United Kingdom.

In April of this year, TAL supported the 2019 UNESCO International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Education in Beijing.

Global practice, ambassador of civilization

In 2017, TAL established Career China specifically for the introduction of high-quality foreign teachers. Wan Yiting shared the story of a foreign teacher named Carmen living in Beijing, and the "My Story in China" event initiated by Career China, which invited foreign teachers to record and share their wonderful experiences in China using photos and videos. It has invited over 1500 foreign teachers, who have come to China from afar to introduce China to the world and become cultural exchange ambassadors.

In September of this year, Think Academy was founded in Silicon Valley in the United States to provide math thinking improvement courses for American children, and in October, TAL's online school in Boston officially opened.

Another story shared by Wan Yiting was about Shane, a Harvard graduate who was attracted by TAL's unique teaching methods and materials used at the online school.

Inclusive, serving the domestic market

Wan Yiting introduced that TAL has been exploring ways to provide better education in China by gathering global education resources and learning advanced technology and educational concepts. For example, TAL has learned from Minerva University's experience with online live teaching and interdisciplinary project-based learning. TAL has also acquired Israel's well-known children's programming education brand CodeMonkey to develop a comprehensive course system for programming education in China, named "Little Monkey Programming".

In early 2018, TAL signed an agreement with Stanford University in the United States to jointly explore key areas such as semantic recognition and human-computer interaction in the field of artificial intelligence, and established a research and development department in Silicon Valley. In April of this year, TAL signed an agreement with UNESCO to jointly research the application scenarios and ethical boundaries of artificial intelligence technology.

Based on the independently developed artificial intelligence technology, TAL provided the "AI Teacher Mandarin Teaching System" to over 70,000 students and 2,000 primary and secondary school teachers in Sichuan Province in 2018.

At the conference, Wan Yiting vividly described the story of a sixth-grade student in a local ethnic primary school who fell in love with reading after learning Mandarin with the "AI Teacher."

Cooperating for mutual benefit with China and foreign countries

Wan Yiting stated that TAL's development also provides more opportunities for global quality educational resources to land in China. For example, TAL's Publishing Center has collaborated with DK Publishing in the fields of children's popular science content, distribution, and research resources; Nobel Prize-winning physicist Carl Wieman has been hired as a senior research fellow at TAL's Science Research Institute, responsible for upgrading the teaching and research of the online school; TAL International and National Geographic have jointly customized the curriculum and teaching materials system.

In the future, TAL will continue to expand and deepen cooperation with foreign countries, following UNESCO's goal of "ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all" to provide quality education for children worldwide.