ByteDance to sack staff in education arm

TikTok owner ByteDance said yesterday it would sack an undisclosed number of workers in its education business and close some of its tutoring operations.

China last month issued rules barring curriculum-based tutoring for profit, aiming to ease financial pressures but have left private education firms facing significant losses.

ByteDance will fire some teachers, sales and advertising staff in the education unit and will shut its curriculum-focused preschool and K12 tutoring businesses to be compliant with the regulations.

The closures include the shuttering of its one-on-one English online classes app Gogokid. Yesterday, the app was not available to be downloaded from Apple's App Store in China.

ByteDance did not offer immediate comment.

ByteDance, whose hit products include short video apps TikTok and Douyin as well as news aggregator Toutiao, had hoped to find one of its next successes in education, making it as priority.

It established education unit Dali, "forceful strength" last October and runs several tutoring apps aimed at preschool kids and K12 students. The unit has more than 10,000 employees and its other products include school courses tutoring app Qingbei.