Online education for elementary and secondary school students began on Monday, March 2.

The education program covers 1.435 million students across Shanghai.

It offers video courses for different grades in different time periods. The videos are choreographed by a professional panel under the city’s education commission, including over 1,000 teachers and a technical support team of 200 staffers.

As of March 2, the teaching materials have been given out smoothly. Nearly 1.4 million students have received paper textbooks while the others have downloaded soft copies.

Besides video courses, there are intervals for the flag-raising ceremony, eye protection exercises and morning exercises.

However, online education still cannot take the place of classroom teaching, either for teachers or students, said Lu Jing, director of the Municipal Education Commission. Once the semester officially begins, schools will assess the results of students’ online learning, to see whether there is a necessity for extra remedial teaching.