up, in the northeast, we have a huge training center called Joy School.  actually it is big all over china.  i used to work for them, they have good material, and good Chinese teachers, but they treat the foreigner like a slave. 

i have noticed the the big training centers up here are slowly getting less busy and having trouble keeping both foreigners and Chinese teachers.  they are doing more and more demo classes and holding events.  i don't believe the change in the gao kao English score is having too much of an effect on these schools because one, its too early to tell, and two the score change is only in Beijing for now.  plus, my city is rather wealthy, because of oil, and all the parents want their "little angels" to study abroad. 

i do believe the the private schools are slowly going to lose out to other institutions, but it will take time.  i think foreigners are finally sick of being mistreated, underpaid, and forced to do extra work.  i think private schools are going to have more trouble procuring the proper documents to legally operate and hire teachers.  i think parents are becoming wise to the fact that most these schools are scams and over priced.  and i think the government is getting pressure to close all the illegally operated and poorly run schools. 

having said all this, my tutoring business is exploding!  more and more parents want to come with their kids, as long as you follow a book and have a curriculum you can show them, they will pay.  i work at a government university now, and i do believe that gov schools are going to be the only safe bet for foreigners in the future.  so get it while you can! 

Tutoring is a good job because you have students who want to learn. The reform will go further when the government realizes that English should be an Elective at the high School level.  I teach English to Grade 10 students.  The only reason most of them to learn English is for Gao Kao.  After Uni, no English speaking for most of them.  Most of my college students over the past 3 years see this.  These are the parents of the future.  Not one will not be sending their kids to training centers. I see these centers going the way of the Polaroid camera. Still around but very few left. 

Here in Dongguan, Meten are still going strong due to their marketing ability but the students as always never stay for long or continue, EFs business is in decline so they opened a new center recently to try and push for new business in another part of downtown.

The problem here is there are too many competitors, I could easily drive you 3km around town and we could spot at least 20 different schools.

The school I am currently with is HUGELY popular and is the oldest in Dongguan, right now we have 16 classes, 8 in the evening and 8 on a Sunday, plus numerous kids classes and VIPs (I personally have 2 VIP classes there), also have business classes in companies. The reason for the success is the reasonable prices, you can have 48hrs with a foreign teacher for 1700, that's for 2 months classes, that's around 10k a year, Meten and EF are charging 20-30k per year. Our school has around 200 students studying at any one time and we are making money!

Compared with the past the students are just realizing there is more to study than just a brand name, they are looking for quality teachers, I found EF and Meten to hire the drags of society, in general as there are some great teachers who I personally know but usually it's just the teachers who want to make some cash and then spend it on partying, and lastly with job cut's and salaries not rising too much they are looking for an affordable price.

EF closed 6 centers in Shenzhen this year..

There was a time when training centers were rumored to be a good investment, nice money makers, and with lots of franchises to pick acording to your needs with different requirements and price tags, just like for convenience stores.

That's the spirit that drove the opening of many of those traning centers, which then rose because of the popularity of studies abroad (and the Gaokao, but I think it's mainly the perspective of studying abroad).

What one must understand, it's that in the eyes of the kind of people that bought those franchises, education is just a business, sorta like a mundaine version of any other factory back in the village, that doesn't really have anything special about it : you get the "ressources" (teachers), a big marketing department that's usually paid on results, which means in China very aggressive and repulsive, and then your foreign teacher that's half marketing half teaching, he's expensive but heh, you got to get one these days.

Now, you get the perspective and understand the phenomemon we all know : with bosses/investors having absolutely zero grasp on education only there for milking the cow, many centers proved to be absolute garbage, even with the control and support of powerful franchises like EF.

With stricter controls on illegal teachers (that actually remain rumors as for now) and probably a better awareness of the parents, the market that used to be a booming jungle just like any newfound market is stabilizing. Stabilizing for the best and getting only the good schools with good management around, one might hope, but this is China, so you'd best expect guanxi to be the number one agent of natural selection, with quality of education on the margin (or rather in big letters on some sign in the entrance).