In the era of capital wrestling to invest in quality education in all aspects, study tour is an important subdivision of quality education, and the rest includes art education, physical education, STEAM education, quality of life etc. Since the Ministry of Education and other 10 departments jointly issued a document in 2016 integrating study research into daily teaching activities, which greatly promoted the development of the study tour industry. High-quality content, core channels and scarce resources have become the core competitiveness of the study tour industry.
Study Tour Enters the Age of Capital Wrestling
In the market environment where the competition pattern of the study tour industry is relatively scattered, at present, in addition to professional study tour agencies, major schools and teaching and training agencies extend the product matrix to expand the field of study tour. At the same time, tourism enterprises and real estate enterprises are using education to revitalize the industry. For example, Ctrip combined with the advantage of owning an online travel platform’s traffic flow to lay out the pan-camp industry online platform Ctrip's study tour, which includes military summer camp, study tour camp and family tour.
According to the White Paper on Pan-Tour and Camp Education in 2019, the domestic market size for pan-tour and camp education has reached 94.6 billion yuan in 2018, and is expected to maintain a compound annual growth rate of 20%. In the first half of 2019, there were 10 investment and financing events focusing on camp, study tour services at home and abroad, most of which were before Round A. However, in March 2019 alone, five camp education institutions have completed financing tours——the US Tour Camp, Opening Camps in Northern Latitude, Shenzhen Children's Weekend, Parents' Camp, and Maihe Education, with funding ranging from millions to tens of millions. Among them, Baobaoshu strategically invested in the Parents' Camp in March, Boshile Education strategically invested in the Opening Camps in Northern Latitude, and Ivy Summer Camp, an American summer camp institution, was acquired by Huanshi Study Tour, the American International Study Tour Service and Overseas Studies Service Agency.
At present, the participants in China's pan-TOUR and camp education markets are still in a scattered development mode of acting on their own. The educational resources, tourism resources, real estate resources, information resources and student sources in various regions are relatively separated from each other. To a certain extent, the development efficiency of China's pan-tour and camp education industries is low. No matter for study tours or research tours, although there are a wide variety of market products, including major preferred high-end summer schools, overseas K-12 classes, international language classes, local theme camps, walking experience classes and public welfare voluntary programs, the essential purpose and core driving factors are basically the same, all of which are to enable students to “walk out of the campus” and carry out experiential learning, broaden students' horizons, cultivate children's scientific thinking mode and learning ability, and cultivate students' good ideological character and sound personality. From the price point of view, the unit price of international study tour products is mostly distributed in the range of 20,000-50,000 yuan, the average unit price of domestic research products is mostly below 6,000 yuan, and camp education is mostly below 8,000 yuan. Among them, primary and secondary study tour institutions with a revenue scale below 10 million level account for the vast majority. At present, the largest organization of study tour is still schools, accounting for about 70% of the market share, and education and training institutions/study abroad agencies, travel agencies and professional study tour institutions each account for about 10%.
Xishan School Collects High-quality Educational Resources from Britain, and the “Unity of Knowledge and Practice” of Study Tour Shows the Characteristics
As the quality education industry gradually moves to the center stage and the study tour enters the era of capital wrestling, how to create characteristics has become the direction that all major schools and institutions chase after and explore. Fujian Xishan School, an investment school under the China First Capital Group Limited, has gradually moved towards the goal of “high-quality, futuristic, full-residence, new-style” education from “liberal arts-oriented, sports-arts-featured” to train international compound talents with international vision and global competitiveness who are excellent both in knowledge and ability and integrated with Chinese and western cultures, in line with the advanced international concepts. To this end, through the integration and introduction of the high quality resources and the layout of China First Capital Group Limited in the education industry at home and abroad, the Xishan School not only has built cooperative ties with the UK's century-old aristocratic elite school Kingswood, and Singapore Raffles Music School , but also, in June 2019, established a sister institution relationship with the famous British school Kingsley School, to further introduce the high quality British education concept and curriculum into Xishan School. The Kingsley School was established in 1884. It is a private co-educational boarding school of a long history, and it is a higher education institution and member of the Wesleyan Union. It has long enjoyed a good reputation for its long tradition, strict discipline and lofty Moral values.
This summer, Kingsley School is working with Fujian Xishan School to jointly launch the unique Limits Breaker Xishan-Kingsley International Study Summer Camp. From the classroom to the outside of the school, students from Kingsley and Fujian Xishan School have had a joyful study tour revolving around the PBL project learning system, through the STEAM+PBL course. The study tour came to the Magical Metropolitan “Shanghai” and the famous historical city “Suzhou”, during which, the campers not only personally made Chinese traditional culture symbols such as kites, shadow puppets, and learned martial arts, but also participated in scientific activities such as paper planes and water rocket production through advanced STEAM courses introduced from abroad. STEAM education advocates learning in real tasks and emphasizes learning in hands-on practice. Such more comprehensive learning is an important way to cultivate students' core qualities such as rational thinking, criticizing and questioning, courage to explore, reflection, labor consciousness, problem solving, and technology application, etc.. Fujian Xishan School expects that Chinese students will open up their understanding of the diversity of world culture in their characteristic experiences brought about by Chinese and Western cultural education, open up their minds in mutual enlightenment, and learn to think independently and enhance creativity.
On the basis that the international summer camp activities were highly praised by the teachers and students of the two universities, Fujian Xishan School and Kingsley School once again deepened the cooperation between the two schools and pre-launched the exchange student project. The exchange program aims to open the door to British education for Xishan students. During the three-month (one semester) study, the exchange students will receive a British education in full accordance with the Kingsley School curriculum, from work schedules and curriculum to interest groups, all the same as British students, to let them really feel the British culture, and experience British teaching immersively.
Fujian Xishan School also jointly carried out a featured UK study trip with the KSI Education. KSI Education is a leading international standard education service provider in China, which integrates international education services such as curriculum system, management services, tutorship services and student background improvement. It focuses on UK's top universities, such as Oxford University, Cambridge University, Kingswood, Harris Manchester College, Royal Academy, and the Prince's Institute of Education. In the view of Xishan School, the British study tour has three different learning experiences: language promotion, English small class teaching and PBL teaching. Through customized teaching with a combination of language learning and traveling, and integrating traveling and learning, let Xishan students learn to use the shortest time to integrate into the local learning life in the Twin Group Language Center, and cultivate adaptability, problem-solving ability and independence in the all boarding family environment, and improve English listening and speaking ability in all-round language immersing, and learn the ability of lecturing, project execution and creativity as well.
Nowadays, with education as the essence of products and services, the competitive situation of winning by quality will become more prominent. It is a challenge and opportunity that the research and study industry will face in the future to provide customized services for different characteristics and needs on the basis of maintaining the quality of products and services. China First Capital Group Limited will also increase its research on educational products and management services through the advantages of resource integration, provide educational empowerment for the schools it has invested in, pay attention to the future development of students, and help students to grow better through professional, knowledge, interesting and scientific education methods, focusing on patriotic education, psychological education, emotional education and application of curriculum knowledge.
