SHANGHAI Education Commission said yesterday that it would establish a special group to reduce local students’ education burden.

This would involve further regulating and improving standards of training agencies, or cramming schools, used by children after school finishes.

The commission said its special group would cooperate with other authorities in charge of examination and admission as well as training institutes to handle the problem of students being overburdened by too much homework and after-school training classes.

“We will first carry out a survey to get a picture of the whole situation, including the real number of training agencies, their management problems and the training contents they provide,” said Jia Wei, deputy director of the education commission.

Jia stressed courses taught by training agencies had to follow the rules on children’s physical and mental development.

Many training agencies were criticized for running ahead of the official syllabus to give their students advantages over others in exams or with applications to popular schools, thereby causing more burden for children.