Investigate what the |'s prevailing robot race is all about

With the rise of STEM education, more and more parents have begun to enroll their children in LEGO, programming and other related courses. On May 13, a reporter from Beijing Business Daily received a number of parents who reported that their children were unfairly treated and their results cancelled when they participated in the robot competition held by the institution. At the same time, the results of the students in the entire Fangshan Division were not recognized on the day of the competition. After the investigation, the reporter found that the RA robot competition in which the students participated was hosted by berko Education Group and hosted by Maku Robot, which was not in the white list of competitions released by the Ministry of Education, and belonged to the civil society competition organized by the institution. According to relevant industry insiders, training institutions engage in such competitions, mainly to promote the sales of courses and hardware, which are not authoritative, and the use of awards is not large.

Canceled grades

A few days ago, the Beijing Business Daily reporter received a number of parent reports, saying that their children participated in the RA robot competition held by an institution, but the results were cancelled on the spot after the competition. "By the end of the second round of competition in the afternoon, the organizing committee's statement still recognized that the results were valid, we and the child waited until more than 6 p.m., and the final result was that the results could not be announced temporarily, and the award could not be awarded", Ms. Li, a parent, told reporters that the game lasted all day, in the morning game, the referee did not point out that there was a problem with the utensils, until the end of the game, the referee team suddenly said that the utensils were unqualified, and the results could not be announced and awarded. At the same time, the results of all the contestants in ms. Li's Maku Robot Fangshan Campus were not announced and recognized on the spot.

"The impact of this incident on children is still quite large, and the children think that I have worked so hard why I can't even go to the stage, and even several children don't want to continue to study in the institution." Ms. Li said in an interview. According to the survey, the training institution "Maku Robot" is the organizer of this RA robot competition, and most of the students who have the qualifications to participate in the competition have registered for the competition and paid a registration fee of 1280 yuan.

"The rules and regulations and regulations of the competition are not in paper", "Parents do not know the rules of the competition", "The rules of the competition have not been said in the group, the pre-competition training children and teachers are in accordance with the requirements, there is no objection in the morning, and the afternoon becomes a non-compliance with the regulations, which is very irresponsible." For the results of the competition, many parents expressed their dissatisfaction to the Beijing Business Daily reporter.

In response to parents' questions, the Beijing Business Daily reporter contacted the person in charge of the Maku Robot Fangshan Campus, who said that the entire competition process did have some flaws in the communication link of the event rules, resulting in the campus's plan not being recognized by the event group, and the school's student results could not be announced on the spot. "Last Sunday we re-organized an award ceremony where the operations manager at headquarters and the people on the campus completed the award." However, the award was not recognized by parents, and many parents still asked the headquarters to give a description of the competition and restore the relevant results of the child's competition.

Behind the prevalence of "folk competitions"

Talking about the original intention of participating in the competition, many parents said that they hope to exercise their children through the competition, and some parents said that in addition to exercising their children, they also hope that the competition can make the child's resume look better and can help their children's future further education. But in fact, competitions sponsored by corporate organizations such as the RA Robot Competition have not been officially recognized and are not on the white list of competitions by the Ministry of Education.

The Beijing Business Daily reporter also found from the "List of National Competition Activities for Primary and Secondary School Students in the 2020-2021 Academic Year" released by the Ministry of Education that there are 21 officially recognized natural science literacy competitions, and the organizers are mostly third-party societies and centers such as the Association for Science and Technology, and there is no competition led by enterprises. And the Ministry of Education also clearly requires that the national competition for primary and secondary school students must adhere to the public welfare and must not be for profit. The organizer and organizer of the competition shall not charge any fees to students or schools.

Civil society competitions, which charge an entry fee, are clearly not officially recognized. For the thousands of yuan of registration fees charged by the RA robot competition, the person in charge of the Maku Robot Fangshan Campus also said in the explanation that the 1280 yuan registration fee includes 300 yuan of student electronic file fees, and the remaining 980 yuan is the material fee, involving the cost of venues, manpower, clothing and other aspects.

In contrast, civil society competitions not only have less gold content than official competitions, but also pay a significantly higher price for participation than official competitions. This makes one wonder what makes these unofficial competitions still popular among institutions and parent groups. In this regard, an industry insider, who did not want to be named, said that some training institutions engage in such competitions mainly to promote the sale of hardware and courses. "General institutions will designate their own hardware as competition equipment to sell goods, or integrate the course packaging and sell it to students as an event course."

At the same time, in the investigation, the Beijing Business Daily reporter also found that at present, many parents still have a large information gap in their cognition of domestic competitions, and many parents have already registered in the institution when they do not understand the gold content and significance of the competition, and only after participating in the competition do they realize that the use of the competition is not large.

Blind follow-up should be avoided

In fact, judging from the policies of the Ministry of Education in recent years, it has become a trend to reduce the number of competition items and reduce the impact of competitions in further education. However, judging from the overall environment of domestic competitions, it still needs to be improved. Some insiders said that the unofficial competition organized by the institution, if the course design can really help students learn things, exercise the hardware control and programming ability of students, or have a certain significance, "but if the design of the event is purely to teach students how to control Lego, no programming and development, just press the machine switch on the line, then it is not interesting." Said the above practitioners.

Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the China Academy of Educational Sciences, also pointed out in an interview that the problems existing in the current domestic competition are more complicated. "Since the current official management of the competition is based on the whitelist model, and the requirements can not be charged, this has led to the interruption of some well-done competitions. At the same time, some professional evaluation agencies have a relatively narrow living space under the existing competition requirements. Chu Zhaohui said that from the institutional point of view, the contradiction of providing living space for unofficial professional evaluation agencies has not been resolved, which has led to some of the competitions in the whitelist that no one participates in, while the competitions that have done well in the past and have been recognized but have not been able to enter the whitelist cannot be done.

In addition, for parents who are keen to participate in civil society competitions, Chu Zhaohui also put forward corresponding suggestions. "First of all, parents need to break the utilitarian mentality, as far as possible do not use it as a basis for further education and other aspects; secondly, do not follow the trend, to the child's interest and ability to focus." Parents should see the competition more as a reference for understanding their children's development. ”

Beijing Business Daily Boiling Point Investigation Team