Roundup: Britain sees increasing gov't support for Mandarin teaching

Britain in recent years has seen strong support from the government for Chinese language teaching in higher education sectors as well as in primary and secondary schools, a Chinese embassy official said here Friday.

Shen Yang, Minister Counsellor for Education at the Chinese Embassy to Britain, made the remarks at the opening ceremony of Annual Chinese Teaching Conference, which was held at the Institute of Education (IOE) Confucius Institute of the University College London (UCL).

"Language collaboration is the centerpiece of the China-UK people-to-people exchange," he said.

The Chinese diplomat also noted that during his four years' stay in Britain, the number of Confucius Institutes have grown from 16 to 29, and that of the Confucius Classrooms have increased from 66 to 127, while a large number of Confucius Classroom Hubs were also established.

Also at the Friday's event, Katharine Carruthers, Director of UCL IOE Confucius Institute, announced that Mandarin Excellence Programme (MEP), a Chinese teaching promotion program funded by the Department for Education will be delivered by her organization in partnership with the British Council.

She said MEP will feature a rigorous program of study for pupils in participating schools, staring from Year 7 (11-year-old children) for selected groups of pupils, and 14 schools have already signed up to start delivery from September this year.

Schools selected to be covered by the program will only include those that have a good track record of Mandarin Chinese and are able to teach the subject from Year 7, according to UCL IOE Confucius Institute.

MEP requires intensive learning -- involving eight hours' study of Mandarin every week, made up of a combination of a minimum of four hours of teacher taught classroom lessons, after-school teaching, self-study and intensive study courses in Britain and China for selected group.

In delivering the program, UCL IOE Confucius Institute will also work with British Council to train a sufficient number of teachers to support the program, Carruthers said.

"It (MEP) is very important for us, and some investment from the British government means that the British government is taking this very seriously," she said.

"If young people want to enjoy a global existence and seize the opportunity to do something exciting, then they should run with it and take advantage of the opportunity for this kind of intensive learning," said Carruthers. She started to learn Chinese until 18 as no school taught Chinese at that time, which makes her think that the young generation is lucky.

Last September, the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced a 10 million pounds investment to allow more children to learn Mandarin at schools. The investment, including recruiting and training more teachers in state schools in England, is expected to have an additional 5,000 students learning Mandarin by 2020. Endit