On December 4th, at GES2018 Future Education Summit, the sub-venue of the conference, TAL Education Group held a strategic cooperation press conference and announced the full acquisition of the popular Israeli children's programming brand CodeMonkey. This is also the first full acquisition of an overseas company since the establishment of TAL Education Group. Witnessed by domestic and foreign guests and media present at the event, including Ophir Gore, Commercial Attaché of the Israeli Embassy in China, Bai Yunfeng, President of TAL Education Group, Huang Yan, CTO and President of Education Open Platform Business Group of TAL Education Group, Yossi Baidatz, CEO of the Israeli Education Technology Center Publishing House, and CodeMonkey CEO Jonathan Schor, the Sino-Israeli education cooperation has opened a new chapter.

TAL Education Group fully acquires Israeli children's programming brand CodeMonkey

In recent years, the cooperation between China and Israel in the fields of economy, trade, and culture has yielded fruitful results. However, in the field of education, the full acquisition of an Israeli company by a Chinese education enterprise is still a first. Ophir Gore, Commercial Attaché of the Israeli Embassy in China, said in his speech, "China and Israel have many similarities, both have brilliant civilizations and ancient cultures and both focus on education. The cooperation between TAL Education and CodeMonkey today is an important step in Sino-Israeli cooperation in the field of education."

TAL Education Group has a deep accumulation of 15 years in the Chinese education field, dedicated to serving public education at a global level, assisting private education, and exploring new models of future education. Adhering to the internationalization strategy of "going out and bringing in," TAL Education continuously strengthens exchanges and cooperation with international education through resource introduction, strategic investment, cultural exchange, and business implementation.

Bai Yunfeng, President of TAL Education Group, warmly welcomed CodeMonkey to join the TAL family and expounded TAL Education's global strategic thinking through this cooperation. He said, "The development of TAL Education has gone through three stages: from insisting on quality to technological innovation, and then to connecting the world. Connection is for integration and innovation, in order to better open up and build together. We hope to integrate the high-quality content of CodeMonkey with the innovative practices of TAL Education in the field of education to jointly create better products. From this cooperation, TAL will join hands with outstanding enterprises globally to bring better education to more children."

President of TAL Education Group, Bai Yunfeng welcomes CodeMonkey to join the TAL family

Founded in 2013, CodeMonkey is a world-renowned children's programming education brand from Israel, covering over 75% of primary and secondary schools in Israel, and is also the national platform designated by the Israeli Ministry of Education for information Olympics events. Currently, CodeMonkey's course products have covered nearly 10 million users in over ten countries and regions around the world, and are widely welcomed by young people worldwide.

The development prospects of children's programming in China are very promising. In 2017, the "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" issued by the State Council clearly stated that AI-related courses should be set at the primary and secondary school stages and programming education should be gradually promoted. With the popularization of the concept of quality education, parents are paying more attention to the comprehensive ability development of their children, and STEAM education courses represented by programming are increasingly favored.

Regarding the significance of the strategic cooperation, Huang Yan, CTO and President of the Education Open Platform Business Group of TAL Education Group, said that programming can cultivate children's thinking and creativity, which is a basic ability for children to communicate with the future world and an important training goal for the quality education of TAL. In the process of the strategic landing of the Education Open Platform, TAL felt the general demand in the industry for high-quality programming content and services. Starting from this cooperation, TAL hopes to inject more international children's programming resources and technologies into the Education Open Platform to help industry partners enter the children's programming field.

CEO Jonathan Schor of CodeMonkey is excited about this cooperation. He said, "China is a key market that we identified very early. TAL Education, with fifteen years of education experience and strong technological research and development capabilities, is the ideal partner for CodeMonkey. The cooperation between both parties will help achieve synergy and support CodeMonkey's better global development. We believe this cooperation will be an important milestone on our development path."

As the incubator and early investor of CodeMonkey, CEO Yossi Baidatz of the Israeli Education Technology Center Publishing House also expressed the willingness to deepen cooperation with TAL Education. He said, "We believe that there is even greater potential in the cooperation between TAL Education and us. Developing innovative educational solutions that meet the development needs of both China and Israel is our responsibility."

In the future, TAL Education will continue to connect with international high-quality educational resources, invest in overseas enterprises, and promote the globalization of education development. At the same time, TAL will also continue to empower the industry through the Education Open Platform and connect with more partners, using technology to promote the progress and upgrade of the Chinese education industry.