China’s 51Talk, a global digital platform on teaching English to Chinese students, continues its expansion in the Philippines.
Since it started operating in the country, the platform already has established six Center-Based Training (CBT) Program hubs in Bacolod, Baguio, Cebu, Davao, Pasig, and Cavite.
Photo: Jack Huang, founder and CEO of 51Talk online English language platform. (EKU)
Just this month, 51Talk opened its seventh CBT in Quezon City. Its CBT hubs serve as a 30-day venue for teachers’ training to become and qualify as full-fledged home-based online teachers; but, first, only after completing and passing a rigorous technical and teacher training.
In an email to SDN — Scitech and Digital News, executives of the English language education portal explained the CBTs’ function.
“Under the CBT Program, they will have face-to-face training and real-time coaching provided by on-site trainers and QAs. These will help them not only in becoming effective home-based online English teachers but also in properly navigating online teaching technology,” they said.
Leading e-education platform
51Talk is the leading Online English Teaching Language platform in the country today.
It opened its seventh training center in Quezon City recently, adhering to its goal of widening its operations in the Philippines and is expected to help newly
launched teachers equipped themselves with knowledge and skills necessary for becoming effective home-based online teachers.
Jennifer Que, 51Talk vice president for Philippine Operations, cited the significance of Quezon City to the company’s entry in the country.
“Quezon City is where we started everything, and it is in Congressional where we started our humble beginning. With the launching of the CBT Center, people at the training centers get to take advantage of the real-time and technical support provided by 51Talk,” she said.
While 51Talk also has adult students, a large majority of its total student population currently stands at 80 percent children, even as the company designed the series of training “to be more intensive, intimate, and interactive.”
Earlier, 51Talk founder and CEO Jack Huang revealed that they plan to hire around 100,000 Filipino online teachers for the platform inside five years.
Photo: CEO Jack Huang and Jennifer Que, VP for Philippine Operations of 51Talk. (EKU)
He said they have invested US$100 million to make the 51Talk system stable so that every student will be able to access it with any device they want to use.
Filipino teachers 51Talk’s choice
The online platform has given premium to hiring Filipinos as teachers.
“Our goal is to make every student communicate well in English…more and more people (in China)…students and parents want to learn English,” Huang said.
He added that they want to make quality education easily accessible and affordable in China.
The establishment of the CBTs in the Philippines helps 51Talk ensure a harvest of quality teachers after attending the centers.
Listed in 2016 in the New York Stock Exchange under the China Online Education (NYSE: COE), Huang and his co-founder Sue Ting established 51Talk in 2012, which then became a leading Online English Education platform.
At present the platform has 15,000 Filipino online teachers, which is targeted to grow to 17,000 by end of 2018. Its teachers earn from Php40,000 to Php80,000 a month working at home.
In working at home, 51Talk teachers are freed from commuting every day, thereby unaffected by the country’s — particularly Metro Manila’s — suffocating and seemingly solution-less and paralyzing, monstrous traffic jams.
Teachers need to have a stable source of electricity, fast cabled internet (Wi-Fi is not sufficient), and high-end computers with at least i3 processor, big memory (RAM), and large storage capacity because the lessons are being done mostly in video format.
Its website says at present 51Talk has over one million young students. And growing. (EKU)
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