Photo/Shetuwang

Dec. 14 (NBD) -- As China continues to promote equity in education, a possible solution may have been found to expand access to good education for students in low-income regions in China.

Students of 248 high schools in less-developed areas in China have been taking classes from a prestigious school through live-streaming, according to an article published (in Chinese) on Thursday by China Youth Daily.

The program was launched in 2002 initiated by southwest China's Sichuan province and the educational authorities of Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan. And the distance learning classes are run by an Internet company and Chengdu No. 7 High School, of which students are admitted in the top universities in China and prestigious universities across the world every year.

Well-situated in the area just a mile from the center of Chengdu, Chengdu No. 7 High School is more like a small beautiful university where students take piano and ukulele in music classes and posters on the glass curtain wall display information of contests hosted by Tsinghua University, the admission information of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and solicitation notice of an independent music magazine.

The live-streaming screens bring the educational resources of this prestigious high school closer to students in less-developed areas thousands of miles away. It's like two seeming parallel lines finally meet.

For the past 16 years since the program commences, a total of 72,000 students have walked through the 3-year high-school learning with Chengdu No. 7 High School through videos, according to Wang Hongjie who is in charge of the program. Most of them have enrolled in undergraduate courses and 88 have made their way into Tsinghua, one of the best universities in China.

As Wang said, it feels like that the program lights up a well and drops a rope, and then people in the well start to see the sky and begin to climb up as hard as they can.

In order to see those amazing results in person, the author of the China Youth Daily's feature Cheng Mengchao visited Luquan No.1 High School in the poverty-stricken county Luquan in Yunnan province.

The live-streaming learning program brings about pressure as well as motivation for teachers and students.

A teacher at Luquan No. 1 High School told Cheng, "since students here get to compare our classes with those delivered at Chengdu No. 7 High School, we teachers should change accordingly, or students may talk."

While failing to keep up the pace of the courses of Chengdu No.7 High School at the beginning and watching those "genius" at the other end of the screen studying and playing hard, and planning their after-school tutoring, many students in Luquan county at first doubt themselves but later find directions and study hard to catch up.

"Students at both ends of the live-streaming screens are happy," said Wang Hongjie.

Education has long been viewed as the key to alleviate and even end poverty.

Will live-streaming classes change the destiny of the students participating in the program? Nobody can give a definite answer, but at least this offers a possibility.

Email: gaohan@nbd.com.cn