BEIJING — China has finished scrutinizing 718 online businesses providing after-school training programs amid intensifying efforts to regulate the private education market, the Ministry of Education (MOE) said on Jan 8.

Online training providers were asked to rectify their problems spotted in the scrutiny before the end of June, the ministry said.

The MOE, in joint efforts with five other central authorities, launched a campaign in July 2019 to check the operation information, course contents and teachers' qualifications of online training businesses.

As of Dec 31, 2019, education authorities had finished the scrutiny on 3,463 courses and 115,622 teachers of these 718 online training course providers, the MOE said.

Going forward, provincial education authorities will release a blacklist of unqualified or poorly-operated online training providers and suspend or shut down their online services, it added.