Online education for people in their golden years

An educational television program targeting people above the age of 50 debuts in the city today.

"Golden School" – jointly created by the Shanghai Education Commission, Shanghai Radio and Television Station, Shanghai Media Group and Oriental Pearl Group – was launched on the BesTV app on February 9, enabling those aged 50 and above to take free classes on mobile devices. Now they can watch it on TV.

As the first educational platform designed for this age group, it offers about 1,000 classes covering areas such as smart life, culture and entertainment, and health and science.

The smart life class focuses on the challenges older people have in adapting to the digital world. There is also a course where students learn how to use smartphones.

Other classes include cooking, gardening, tea art, fashion, calligraphy and opera.

Liu Xiaofeng, vice chairman of the Shanghai Radio and Television Station, Shanghai Media Group and Oriental Pearl Group, said offline community products and services will also be developed.

“As a city with a large population of people 50 and over, there's growing demand for continuing education in Shanghai in this age group,” said Ni Minjing, deputy director of the Shanghai Education Commission. “With the development of information technology, especially against the backdrop of the pandemic, the modes of learning for this age group are also changing. Golden School enables those 50 and over to benefit from quality lifelong learning resources at home. We hope everyone will join us to support lifelong education and ensure the entire population, especially older people, has a sense of achievement, happiness and security.”

Shanghai has been promoting the development of education for older people. It now has four city-level colleges for people 50 and above, 44 branches citywide, 18 at the district level, 221 in towns and industrial parks and close to 5,500 study sites in villages. There are also tens of thousands of “classrooms” in residential communities, office buildings and workshops. Nine local universities, including Fudan University and East China Normal University, have also set up colleges for older people.

The city has also accelerated the development of digital study resources for older people to make learning more convenient.

After the outbreak of COVID-19, an online learning platform – "School in the Air" – was launched on the Shanghai Lifelong Learning website, offering more than 6,000 micro and 2,000 long video courses enabling people to take classes in their homes. Some of these courses focus on virus prevention. Livestreaming courses were later added.

About 1.2 million people have benefited from the platform.