What is the current supply-demand relationship situation of foreign teachers in China?
In recent years, with the development of internationalization, the children's international education market has rapidly emerged. However, the outbreak of the pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges to this market. In 2023, as the first year after the pandemic is lifted and also the first year for pandemic babies to enter kindergarten, the international education market, especially the foreign teacher market in children's international education, is full of many unknowns. Senior industry experts have dug out which objective conditions from the market phenomenon would be of interest to foreign teachers?
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Q1.What is the current development trend of the children's international education industry?
On February 23rd, the news of "kindergarten closure wave" directly placed the challenges faced by kindergartens due to changes in population growth in front of kindergarten practitioners. After extensive market research, we have obtained the following key reference information:
1.Population changes
In the past 10 years, the highest birth rate was in 2016, reaching 17.86 million; while the birth rate in 2022 is only 9.56 million, a net decrease of 8.3 million, a decrease of 46.5%. With the increase in the number of children entering kindergarten in 2016, 2017, and 2018, the number of kindergartens has also increased correspondingly in 2019, 2020, and 2021. However, with the sharp decline in birth rates starting in 2020, kindergartens will face closure and enrollment difficulties in 2023. This situation will become more prominent due to the cliff-like decline in birth rates in 2021 and 2022. The market estimates that by 2025, the number of kindergartens will decrease to around 120,000, which means that nearly 60% of kindergartens will be closed.
2.Development trend of kindergartens
From the current national policy inertia affecting private-to-public kindergarten conversion and the education level expectations of millennials for their children, kindergartens will undergo several changes in the following directions:
The number of kindergartens will decrease rapidly.
More private kindergartens will be converted into public ones, and the competition between them will become more intense. Private kindergartens that have not been converted into public ones at the middle and low end will face a shortage of students and be forced to close.
The number of students in public kindergarten classes will decrease, which will reduce the advantage of private kindergartens in this regard and force them to further reduce class sizes from around 25 students per class to around 20 students per class or even less.
With economic growth, especially in core economic regions such as the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Chengdu-Chongqing, and first-tier provincial capitals, the concentration of high-end talents will increase, and there will be an increase in demand for high-end kindergartens.
The teaching characteristics and effectiveness of high-end kindergartens are important to new generation parents with higher education expectations. Therefore, improving teaching characteristics and effectiveness will become one of the main influences on future competition.
Integrated early childhood education and care will become more common and also be one of the magic weapons for kindergartens to respond to changes.
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Q2.What is the current supply-demand relationship situation of foreign teachers in China?
From the perspective of supply-demand relationship, it is still in a situation where demand far exceeds supply, and this severity is even higher than during the pandemic.
1.Reason one
The country changed the classification of COVID-19 from "class B" to "class A" (i.e., "relaxation of control") on December 7th. The border gradually reopened on January 8th. This meant that most schools could not import foreign teachers from overseas during the spring semester. This demand was partially fulfilled in the first half of the year but there was still a huge gap overall.
2.Reason two
During the pandemic period, due to a shortage of foreign teachers on the market, there was a high proportion of non-white foreign teachers and South African teachers available. This led to many schools hoping to replace unqualified, incompetent, undesirable, difficult-to-manage, and expensive foreign teachers. This situation exacerbated demand.
3.Reason three
Since the Russia-Ukraine conflict, propaganda from European and American countries about China has had an undeniable negative impact, leading to increased uncertainty about working in China and causing negative growth in supply relative to demand.
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Analyzing foreign teachers' main source countries can provide some insights:
1) In the past two to three years, the United States' unemployment rate has been at its lowest level in the past decade. Although it was affected by bankruptcies such as Signature Bank and First Republic Bank at the beginning of this year, overall it is still positive.
2) Due to Brexit in 2020 and a large number of laborers leaving the UK from EU countries, there is not much employment pressure in the UK; however, strikes and conflicts between Russia and Ukraine have led to rising living costs and an increasing expectation among young people to work overseas.
3) South Africa's social and economic development, income levels, as well as its status as a BRICS country make it easier for more people to work in China.
Q3.How are foreign teachers regulated across China?
Since 2018, China has made many efforts to strengthen and improve compliance management for foreign teachers. This process was interrupted by the pandemic. After the pandemic ends, each region's compliance management for foreign teachers is gradually being standardized. We have learned that Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Zhengzhou, Hefei and other places are strengthening their compliance management for foreign teachers. This is an inevitable trend in China's legal process and we believe that it will gradually tighten nationwide.
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