China’s 25 tutoring companies listed on the stock exchange at home or abroad no longer offer academic tutoring services to elementary and middle school students following the government’s efforts to lighten students’ academic workload, according to the Ministry of Education.

An unnamed official from the ministry’s after-school tutoring supervision department said the number of offline tutoring facilities for elementary and middle school students had been reduced by 92 percent, from 124,000 to 9. 728, and those online by 87%, dropping from 263 to 34.

All remaining tutoring institutions have been transformed into non-profit organizations and all of their prepaid tutoring fees, totaling 13 billion yuan ($2 billion), are under government supervision, the official said.

All provincial-level regions have released referral rates for tutoring courses based on local conditions, and rates have been reduced by more than 40% from those before the introduction of the ” double reduction,” he said.

According to the policy, which aims to reduce the amount of academic tutoring and ease the burden of homework faced by elementary and middle school students, academic tutoring institutions are prohibited from going public for funding, and investments in these by listed companies and foreign capital are prohibited. .

A recent directive issued by the Ministries of Education and Justice and the Office of the State Commission for Public Sector Reform stated that institutions and individuals caught violating after-school tutoring regulations face heavy fines and a lifetime ban from working in the education sector.

The official said “serious violations” are defined as domestic or cross-regional incidents that result in significant impacts and grave danger, and “heavy fines” mean one to five times their illegal earnings.

The ministry is working on a new guideline on the specifics of administrative sanctions, he added.

The double discount policy also stipulated that academic tutoring companies for high school students must comply with the requirements for elementary and middle school students.

The official said local governments are closely following the policy in regulating tutoring companies for high school students.

The law on the protection of minors stipulates that appropriate arrangements must be made for the university studies of children so that they have time for rest, leisure and physical exercise.

High schools should make efforts to meet the academic study demands of students and parents so that children do not need to take tutoring classes, the official said, adding that no tutoring classes organized by the school is only allowed on public holidays.

Zhang Ying, deputy director of the Liaoning Provincial Department of Education, said the number of academic tutoring institutions for elementary and middle school students in the province had dropped by 99.9 percent, and Shenyang, the provincial capital, no longer had such institutions.

A basic supervision system for extracurricular tutoring made up of sub-district and community workers has been put in place, he said.

More than 300 community workers from a district in Fuxin city used their cellphones to record the violations, he added.

Lou Weimin, director of the education bureau of Jinhua in Zhejiang province, said families’ spending on private lessons in the city had been reduced by 91.8 percent, from 904 million yuan to 83 million. yuan.

To spur local governments to act, the city has ranked its counties and districts on their double reduction progress each month since October, he said.

The city has more than 6,000 community workers who conduct daily inspections of illegal tutoring in their jurisdiction and they have reported more than 3,100 violations, Lou said.

It also set up a rating system for the remaining tutoring institutions. Those who score four out of five stars are allowed to hold after-school services in public schools, he added.