Tutoring platform offers rural students free lessons

Online tutoring platform Zhangmen is offering primary and middle school students free lessons to improve education levels in remote and impoverished areas across the country.

The Shanghai-based company launched the Zhangmen Beacon project with the China Children and Teenagers' fund to address imbalances between rural and urban education by sharing courses through the internet, allowing students in impoverished areas to see lectures given by teachers from other provinces in real time via an online teaching platform.

Zhang Yi, founder and CEO of Zhangmen, said the online teaching project is being used to alleviate the shortage of teachers in poverty-stricken areas, giving students with limited access to education resources more confidence.