Top Schools Caught Up in Refund Crisis — How Can We Resolve Conflicts between Parents and Schools?
Written by 万壑松涛
Edited by Carol
The following article is translated from 苗建媒体监控.
**Translation in progress.
Original Chinese article: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/gw2z5nhkd1-abLo5GmnNAQ.
Since the Xinguang epidemic, schools have adjusted their teaching plans accordingly, and at the same time, many international schools have been caught up in the controversy over the refund of school fees. In the meantime, many international schools have been caught up in the controversy over the refund of school fees. The core demands of parents, the angle of media coverage, the stance of the education department, and whether the controversy over the refund of school fees will affect the reputation of international schools have become the focus of this public opinion.
In order to answer the above questions, we captured recent reports on international school refunds, extracted school names from thousands of data through the Named Entity Recognition NER technique (Note 1), assessed the public opinion heat of relevant international schools in the refund controversy, and mined the textual content in an attempt to analyze the objective impact of the international school refund controversy through quantitative and qualitative analysis to provide decision reference for relevant parties.
Data description
Search terms: (International School OR International Kindergarten) AND Refund of fees
Time frame: 1 April to 30 June 2020
Data sources: the whole web (newspapers, websites, clients, microblogs, weChat, postings, forums, Q&A platforms, short videos, etc.)
The international school fee refund controversy caused two spikes in public opinion between April and June 2020.
The first wave: from April 22 to May 11, the media reported on refund conflicts between international schools and parents across the country, based on parental outbreaks.
The second wave: from June 24 to June 30, parents were dissatisfied with the school's solution, which drew sustained media attention.
Which international schools were heavily influenced by public opinion on fee refunds?
According to Miao Jianjian's ACE Index (Note 2), Beijing Chaoyang Kaiwen School, Beijing Lesheng International School, and Guardian Montessori Bilingual Kindergarten are the three schools that have received the most attention in the refund controversy, leading the public opinion heat index, and all three schools have been reported by influential financial media.
Among them, the 21st Century Business Herald's WeChat article "The "pot" of the epidemic? High-end kindergarten with $16 million in advance tuition not refunded! Spent it all before school even started? The "Gardeners: want parents to share the risk" has a readership of 82,000, reporting in depth on the cost controversy of the Guardian Montessori Bilingual Kindergarten.
Maple Leaf International School of Dalian is somewhat different from other schools in terms of how it spreads, with less coverage but more heat. The discussion mainly came from Weibo, in which local blogger "Dalian Big Story" reported that Maple Leaf was charging unreasonable fees during the epidemic, prompting interaction with netizens. As of June 30, the spread of the story is limited to the media, and there is still a risk of being exposed by the media.
The following issues are reflected in the popularity list:
Conclusion 1: International schools as a whole face challenges under the epidemic
The top 15 hotspot international schools involved in the refund controversy are all well-known schools, 67% of which appear in the "2020 Hurun 100 - China's Top 100 International Schools" list, the problems faced by the head schools are also a side reflection of the overall challenge of the epidemic to the industry.
Conclusion 2: Beijing's international schools are at higher risk of public opinion
The fact that 40% of the schools on the list of hot public opinion, which is much higher than the rest of the country, are from Beijing, while the number of international schools in Beijing only accounts for 11.38% of the total number of international schools in China (Note 3), suggests that the high probability of being defended is not due to the large number of international schools in Beijing, but may be related to the fact that parents of international schools in Beijing are more willing to defend their rights through the media.
What are the views of schools, parents, and the education committee?
The TF-IDF method extracts theme words from thousands of public opinion content, and we can see that schools, parents, tuition, refunds, disputes, epidemic, online classes, force majeure are the hot words of the event, so we can draw a picture of the event: under the epidemic, the poor quality of online classes caused the tuition refund conflict between parents and schools.
Parents: parents demanded refunds for poor quality online lessons, but failed to communicate with the media.
Parents' complaints focus on the poor quality and reduced duration of online classes, which they consider disproportionate to the high tuition fees at international schools, and demand that schools provide refunds and suspend online classes. As many schools were not in session due to the epidemic, there were no expenses for meals or transportation, and parents demanded a refund of these expenses.
At the beginning of the incident, the school was heavily criticized for its communication timeliness and attitude. Parents believed that the school avoided communication and had a tough attitude, thus trust was lost. At the same time, some of the schools started to press for the payment of the next term's tuition without resolving the refund dispute, which further escalated the conflict between home and school and made it more difficult to deal with the case later.
After unsuccessfully communicating with the school, parents began to turn to the outside world for support, such as breaking the news to the media, complaining to local government message boards and the Board of Education, expressing their views on the media, and contacting lawyers to file lawsuits, which brought the conflict into the public eye. From media reports, such as the interface, the Economic Observer and the Beijing News, it was mentioned that some parents broke the news and published the Education Commission's response.
School: many fee discounts offered, but no full tuition refund program
Most schools communicated with parents and offered a number of cost concessions, such as deferred tuition, no tuition increase for the next semester or tuition discounts, refunds for unearned expenses such as meals and bus fare. Supplementing missing class time, etc., were responsive to parents' core demands.
However, the school said it still had operating costs during the epidemic, and none of the international schools at the center of public opinion offered full tuition refunds, sparking some parents' discontent, which is why public opinion has hit its second peak since June 23.
Local education commissions: assess the situation, coordinate with schools and parents to solve problems
In the case of international schools in Beijing, for example, according to media reports, the relevant education committee has been informed of the situation and has communicated with the schools, asking them to do a better job of receiving and communicating with parents' demands and urging them to resolve the issue positively. The policy has been preached to the schools to properly handle the issue of inter-annual tuition fee collection in accordance with the law.
Who is the core communicator of the fee refund controversy?
Media mainstays speak out, small media spreads, low internet attention
In terms of media channels, clients and websites are the main media outlets reporting on the refund controversy, accounting for 82% of the coverage. The media brought the incident into the public eye and reported relatively objectively, citing information from parents, schools, and the education committee, with a neutral attitude. The media's multiple account releases drove secondary referrals.
The media participated in the dissemination on a small scale, and the content was mainly parental outbreak information, such as parental WeChat and school emails.
Weibo, as the main sound field for netizens' discussion, accounted for only 7%, indicating that netizens paid low attention to the incident. At the same time, many netizens do not share the same position as their parents, and under some microblogs there are even comments of netizens and parents tearing each other apart. At present, the microblog discussion has a relatively small impact on the development of public opinion.
The audience for the topic of international schools is not the general public, and public opinion participants have different reactions to the incident.
Media: international school fee refund dispute? This selection is OK, keep up.
From the media: great material! Parents are blasting international schools, and there are proof!
Netizens: How you afford to pay $200,000 a year for tuition and still defend your rights? Go to public school!
Parents who dislike these netizens: Do we deserve to be scammed with more money? Can’t rich people defend our rights?
The media and media outlets have contributed to the international school refund controversy, and the following is a list of core media, platforms and accounts:
Public Opinion Impact of the Refund Crisis
Refund crisis have adverse effects on the target population of the international school
In terms of public opinion, the volume and interaction of the international school fee refund controversy is limited, so it is not a hot issue on the Internet. Due to the size of the rights protection entities, it is unlikely that the refund of international school fees will trigger an online discussion.
However, for the target audience of international schools, the incident may have a negative impact on the school's reputation, especially when parents compare the different ways of handling fees in schools of the same level.
In the broader context, international schools face more complex challenges as parents' willingness to turn to public schools has increased as a result of the epidemic and the international situation.
Public opinion is likely to continue to fester until the dispute is resolved. It is recommended that international schools maintain communication with the education department, parents, and the media to solve the problem on the basis of legal compliance, so as to minimize the negative impact of public opinion and reduce the possibility of another outbreak of public opinion.
References and notes.
Note 1: Jianfeng Gao, Mu Li, Andi Wu, and Chang-Ning Huang.2005. Chinese word segmentation and named entity recognition: A pragmatic Computational Linguistics
Note 2: Miao Jianjian Information Influence of Public Opinion Communication Index (ACE Index) is a theoretical model suitable for China based on reference to current international advanced media analysis and evaluation methods and the characteristics of Chinese media and audiences. The model is built according to three core elements of communication, namely authority + communication power + interaction, and dozens of auxiliary indexes that influence the media communication effect, and each factor is given different weights.
Note 3: The data on the percentage of the number of international schools in Beijing comes from the New Academic International Schools Online Four Library Database 2019 Map of 13 provinces and cities with internationally accredited schools
Data | Miaojian Information Media / Public Opinion Monitoring Platform
Analysis | Miaojian Information Analysis Team
Illustration / Cover Page | Ruby
