Ni Hao, Confucius
Nowadays, more and more British students are learning Chinese. According to the Financial Times, learning Chinese is regarded as a good investment by people with high IQ. The Chinese education has become one of the most important contents in British junior and secondary education. More and more schools offer Chinese courses. Britain is one of the countries with the largest number of Confucius Institutes and classrooms in Europe.
With the enhancement of China’s influence and the rapid development of Sino-British economic and trade relations, more and more British people have realized the important value of learning Chinese. Knowing Chinese means more opportunities.
According to statistics from the Education Department of the Chinese Embassy in the United Kingdom, 148 Confucius classrooms have been set up in 29 Confucius Institutes in the United Kingdom, with a total of 160,000 students registered to study Chinese. The emergence and sustainable development of Chinese learning trend are closely related to the rapid development of China, which promote the development of cultural and economic cooperation between China and Britain at the same time.
In recent years, Britain has not only offered systematic Chinese courses in more and more universities, but also promoted Chinese teaching in primary and secondary schools. The proportion of Chinese classes in private schools has reached 45%. More and more schools have listed Chinese as a second foreign language.
Wade Bilingual Primary School in London is the first English-Chinese private school in Britain. Chinese is no longer just an interest course in primary education. Many primary and secondary schools have special Chinese classrooms: the books and toys; listening, speaking, reading, writing, playing games in the classroom all in Chinese.
Confucius Institutes often have rich and colorful curriculum settings and experiences such as making dumplings, celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival, learning ancient poems, singing Chinese songs, Taiji, Kungfu and so on, which are in order to teach Chinese knowledge and display Chinese culture in an all-round way.
In July last year, around 6,500 British students had applied for the Chinese proficiency test, an increase of about five times compared with eight years ago. For many students, obtaining Chinese language certificate is a great advantage in job hunting. Last September, the Ministry of Education launched the “Excellent Chinese Teaching” project, investing 10 million Pounds (about 87.62 million Yuan) to train at least 5,000 middle school students who can use Chinese fluently and 100 Chinese teachers in four years. There are more than 20 new schools joined the Chinese language teaching program in last year.
The UK government has proposed that the number of Chinese learners should reach 400,000 in 2020. People in Britain realize that learning Chinese is no longer just an interest, but an important skill to enhance their competitiveness. China is now a major trading partner of more than 120 countries around the world. Many British people want their next generation to be ready to seize this opportunity.
Do you know more about this programme:
The Mandarin Excellence programme is an intensive language programme, in which students take Mandarin lessons for an average of eight hours per week. The programme opens up a huge opportunity for schools and young people across England. The programme consists of classroom lessons, after-school teaching, self-study and intensive learning both in the UK and China and aims to take students to a high level of fluency.
The Mandarin Excellence programme is being delivered by the UCL Institute of Education (chinesenetworks@ucl.ac.uk) on behalf of the Department for Education and in partnership with the British Council. Funding is available for state secondary schools across England, and schools can now apply to join in the new academic year.
Photos from: https://ci.ioe.ac.uk/
