BEIJING, PRC November 22, 2010 ¨C China Distance Education Holdings Limited (NYSE: DL) (¡°CDEL¡± or the ¡°Company¡±), a leading provider of online education in China focusing on professional education, today announced that it has obtained approval to offer its study process monitoring program in Guangxi Province, and has signed a three-year exclusive contract with the Guangxi Provincial Education Examination Authority (¡°Guangxi EEA¡±), the designated administrator of self-taught higher education in Guangxi Province, to offer the program.
As part of the agreement, CDEL and Guangxi EEA will jointly develop and operate a new self-taught study process monitoring supplementary education online platform, guangxi.zikao365.com.
The self-taught higher education program is a self-study program designed to allow learners in China to obtain post-secondary education without having to pass the Uniform Entrance Exams (¡°Gaokao¡±) or attend a traditional college or university. Degrees are granted by the Ministry of Education (¡°MOE¡±) to self-taught learners who have passed all exams relating to the diploma or degree courses and who satisfy certain other requirements. Traditionally, 100% of the credits needed to pass self taught programs are earned through final exam scores administered by the MOE. Through CDEL¡¯s study process monitoring program, learners can earn up to 30% of their credits from attendance, assignments and quizzes. The program is designed to foster meaningful learning habits and strengthen the overall educational process.
Mr. Zhengdong Zhu, Chairman and CEO of CDEL commented, ¡°We are pleased to announce the continued expansion of our self-taught program with this new partnership with the Guangxi EEA. As one of our main business development initiatives, we have focused our efforts on expanding our geographical footprint in key self-taught higher education markets in an effort to establish a strong market position. With the addition of Guangxi Province and the recent platform development contract signed with Sichuan Province, we are now active in nine self-taught higher education markets, representing a total addressable market of over 4 million students. As competition in this segment remains limited, and as many of our self-taught higher education contracts have been awarded on an exclusive basis, we believe we are well positioned to command a leading market share as we begin to roll out the program in more provinces. With over 54,000 enrollments in fiscal year 2010, our self-taught initiative is clearly gaining momentum. We believe that the long-term growth potential from this segment is strong, and we expect the program to grow at an accelerated pace in the coming year.¡±
