Chinese online education startup Zuoyebang inked a cooperation agreement with the National Center for Schooling Development Program to explore reforms for future schools, as online education is playing an important role in innovating traditional methods of learning.

Under the new cooperation, the two parties will join together to explore inclusiveness in digital education, integration of online and offline education, big data application, educational technology innovation and learning methods transformation, as well as the training of teachers.

"The cooperation this time is expected to create a digital learning scenario for schools, promote large-scale customized education services and develop large-scale customized education services," the company said. "The frontier exploration of future schools will provide strong support for the country and accelerate the country's modernization of education and its journey toward being an education power."

Founded in 2015, Zuoyebang is an online after-school mentoring platform. It comes with a complete set of educational technology solutions, such as intelligent question answering hardware Paperang and livestreaming courses.

The move came as surging demand for online study from hundreds of millions of students has boosted online education to new heights amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The education sector, which traditionally relies on offline schools and institutions, is moving online seemingly overnight.

At the beginning of 2020, Zuoyebang launched a free livestreaming plan on the first day of the new year and became the first educational institution in China to provide free live courses for students across the country.

Within five weeks of the outbreak, it completed nearly 2,000 online courses, as well as quality-oriented classes spanning a variety of topics, from literacy to epidemic prevention and control. The number of students exceeded 33 million during the outbreak.