Education Archives - Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU)

May 31, 2024June 3, 2024

Why Bridges of Understanding to British Universities really matter!

As we all know education exchange is one of the best ways to grow friendship and understanding between the people of Britain and the people of China. So today I’d like to share with you some thoughts from one of my ex students – Wang Xiao Yu. Wang studied IGCSE and A Level courses with me in Beijing, before successfully completing first a BSc in Psychology with Education and then an MSc in the same subject this year. Here she reflects on the importance of choosing a British university.

*Wang Xiao Yu organises the timetable of our volunteer school in Yunnan*

“ A Chinese Student’s Journey: Navigating University Life in the UK

Studying abroad is an adventure that promises both challenges and rewards. As a Chinese student pursuing my education in the UK, I embarked on a journey fuelled by aspirations and curiosity.

Choosing the UK: A Blend of Practicality and Passion

Selecting a destination for higher education is a pivotal decision, one that requires careful consideration of academic excellence, cultural fit, and personal aspirations.

For me, the UK emerged as a compelling choice, blending practical considerations with a passion for exploration and learning. British universities have high academic reputations. They attracted me with their rigorous curriculum, innovative research opportunities, and highly respected and professional faculty. As a student who aspires to excel in my chosen field, studying in an academically rich environment with world-renowned professors held immense appeal. The UK’s commitment to academic excellence, with its global recognition for pioneering research and innovation, affirmed my belief that pursuing my studies here would provide me with the knowledge and skills needed to thrive in an increasingly competitive world.

Beyond academic aspects, my decision to choose a UK university was also influenced by personal experiences of previous visits to the UK. The rich cultural heritage and diverse atmosphere, each encounter left an indelible mark on my consciousness, sparking a desire to delve deeper into the cultural tapestry of this dynamic nation. It is a place where I could interact with individuals from all walks of life and broaden my understanding of the world, making it a natural choice for my higher education pursuits. It symbolised not only a strategic step towards my future career but also a profound voyage of self-exploration and development. As I ventured into this new phase of my life, I embraced it with eagerness, expectation, and appreciation for the myriad opportunities awaiting me.

*Wang Xiao Yu shares her views at an international education conference*

The Reality Unfolds: Surprises, Pressures and Balancing

Upon arrival, the reality of studying in the UK unfolded before me, blending seamlessly with my expectations in some aspects while challenging preconceptions in others.

The classroom dynamic, characterised by open discussions and encouraged participation, mirrored my anticipations. The emphasis on critical thinking and independent learning fostered a stimulating academic environment conducive to personal growth. Since I experienced such a classroom environment in my high school, I was able to integrate and immerse myself quickly in this style of teaching. The multicultural milieu provided opportunities for cross-cultural exchange and broadened my perspectives. Engaging with students from diverse backgrounds enriched my learning experience, fostering friendships and transcending geographical boundaries.

Shifting from learning to living experience, the UK provides vibrant cultural and recreational activities, offering avenues for exploration and enrichment outside the classroom. I explored endless enriched culture from world-renowned museums and galleries showcasing historical artefacts and fine art collections to the vibrant theatre scene and music festival of London’s West End.

Alongside this cosiness and surprise, there were also things in the UK that differed from my initial perceptions and caused me to feel stressed. Homesickness and cultural adjustment were the initial challenges for me, as being far away from family, friends, and familiar surroundings sometimes triggered my feelings of loneliness and disconnection, especially when I had not fully adjusted to the UK culture. I spent a long time integrating into new social circles, navigating unfamiliar social dynamics, and overcoming behavioural differences. Thanks to the support from my parents, friends, and tutors from the university, I was able to adjust my emotions to maintain good mental health and well-being.

Adaptation to a more independent way of life, including managing finances, accommodation, and daily tasks, posed subsequent obstacles. Compared to the structured support systems prevalent in China, navigating the intricacies of daily life in a foreign country demanded resilience and resourcefulness. Balancing academic pursuits with social engagements and personal responsibilities became a pivotal aspect of my university experience, and I am still trying to cope with them.

*Adapting to brunch, English style, with a side order of Chinese porridge*

Friendship and Collaboration: Bridging China and UK Together

Reflecting on the relationship between English universities and China, it is evident that collaboration and exchange play a significant role in fostering mutual understanding and academic progress. Living in the UK offers students access to a vast network of professionals, industry experts, and alumni associations. Engaging in networking events, internships, and work placements provides valuable opportunities to build connections, gain practical experience, and enhance employability prospects. My university offers platforms for career plans and volunteering opportunities targeting individuals’ preferences and aims for their future jobs. They also organised workshops on teaching job CVs and interviews systematically to help students better face future challenges.

The growing partnerships between institutions facilitate research collaborations, student exchanges, and cultural initiatives, enriching the academic landscape for both nations. Student exchanges play a crucial role in fostering mutual understanding and building bridges between the UK and China. When studying in another country, I have the opportunity to immerse myself in a different academic environment, gain cross-cultural competencies, and form lasting friendships with peers from diverse backgrounds. I became friends with an Indian girl in one of my postgraduate classes. While the interaction and discussion of our ideas fulfilled my understanding of education and life in her country, she also gained more ideas about the history and interesting things that happened in China.

Studying in the UK as a Chinese student has been a transformative journey marked by personal and academic growth. While challenges abound, the experiences were invaluable in broadening horizons, developing lifelong friendships, and fostering a global perspective. As I navigate the complexities of university life, I am reminded the journey itself is as enriching as the destination, shaping me into a more resilient, adaptable, and culturally aware individual.”

*Wang Xiao Yu celebrates her international success to date in English fashion, with cake!*

In 2022, Wang Xiao Yu was one of nearly 700,000 international students who chose to study in a UK university, a figure second only to the US. In 2023 approximately 27,000 Chinese students chose to study in the UK. Every one of them will have a story similar to that of Wang Xiao Yu, a story of challenges, of opportunities, a story of the inevitable loneliness of leaving your native country and of the remarkable power of international friendships.

May 9, 2024May 10, 2024

China and the UK between them grow ‘the tree of life’!

*Nurturing the Tree of Life* *together*!

It’s exam time here in Beijing! For students and teachers alike, it’s the same roller-coaster ride of mixed emotions that you will find in any school in England.There’s the same slight giddy hysteria in the air as the students make their final preparations. There’s the same clutching at little squishy calming toys, or devotion to good luck mascots. There’s the same hush of teachers waiting anxiously for the exam room doors to be opened and for students to bring news from the examination battle front of victories and defeats.

There are deeper reasons for the atmosphere to be exactly the same as in a High School in England. The school I lead has a licence from Cambridge International Education, the world’s largest education and assessment company to use their IGCSE and International A Level examinations. These are of course international versions of the GCSE and A Level examinations that students sit in English High Schools. The exams are designed and published in England and flown to centres all over the world, including my school. The student scripts are bundled up and air freighted to England for grading and the issuing of the all important academic certificates, each with a shiny hologram of the Cambridge University badge and the signature of the Vice Chancellor of the university. CIE, as most professionals call them, partner with 10,000 schools around the world and work in 160 countries globally. I think these statistics give you some idea of the enormous hand of friendship that education offers from England to the World.

*From China to the world’s universities*

Why do Chinese students and their families choose to switch from a Chinese education track to an international one? Chinese national education has improved enormously and continues to make progress. Tsinghua University is number 12 in the world, Peking University, number 14 and there are 7 Chinese universities in the World’ Top 100. The explanation is that students and their families have done the Maths and calculated that the probability of securing a world top 50 university is higher following the the international route than the Chinese domestic one. There are possible educational benefits too. One of the strong points about English education is that it increasingly includes skill enhancement alongside knowledge and understanding. Students who leave my school are likely to have better critical thinking, creative thinking and problem solving skills than their peers simply because these competences are ‘baked in’ to A Level courses.

This is the practical answer. However, there’s a deeper set of reasons around their attraction to studying in the UK. And these are deeply humbling. Here are some figures from research by the Universities Counselling and Admission’s Service (UCAS), the not for profit organisation that manages all admissions to UK universities. Their findings in a survey show that 90% of Chinese students opting for international university study would recommend a British university. Further, 92% of Chinese students completing undergraduate studies reported themselves as being satisfied with the quality of their studies and experiences in the UK. 76% of acceptances for Chinese undergraduate students were from what are called ‘high tariff providers’, which most of us would understand as the Russell Group of top 25 British universities.

Originally it appears Business was the most popular course for Chinese international students, but now that is diversifying. I can see an increasing desire for creative subjects. One of my current Sixth Form students is determined to study electronic music, another wants to become an architect, yet another to study Fashion and Design in London which she sees as the fashion centre of the world. These are choices and ambitions as diverse as any I have known in my schools in the UK.

Surely there is so much here that we should be proud of. Anyone with even the slightest contact with Chinese people knows that above all things they value education. This value is not just transactional, although most Chinese people still believe in education as a meritocratic gateway to better life opportunities. Embedded in the culture and the language is a belief in the integrity of learning and its intrinsic value. A popular idiom still tells every young Chinese – 程门立雪 – chéngménlìxuě – to stand patiently at your teacher’s door waiting to study, even waist deep in freezing snow. 77% of Chinese international students believe that British universities are the best in the world. Almost half of the Chinese international students interviewed professed a love of British culture, values and society.

That resonates with my experiences of university counselling, listening to why British universities have such a strong appeal to them. I can’t help thinking to myself sometimes, if only the England of their dreams really existed, an England of fairness, equality and above all, opportunity to be yourself and make something of yourself. English universities seem to be particularly popular with young women and it’s clear that they believe that their education there will be free from the ‘glass ceiling’ out of date ideas about women in education that can still be found here and there in China.

*For most students a UK university is their dream destination.*

Do you understand why anyone in the UK would want to stop this amazing educational bridge of friendship between the UK and China? Even if we are driven by the simplest monetised way of looking at the world, we should surely see this education industry as amazingly lucrative. In 2021, the British Council calculated that Chinese students, as a whole, spent £5.4bn on costs such as tuition fees and living expenses in the UK. To anyone who argues that Chinese students are taking university places ‘that belong to British students’, the response is that the situation is directly opposite to this narrow minded view. The exorbitant fees paid by Chinese students are in fact subsidising the relatively much lower fees for domestic UK undergraduates and graduates.

Yes, a proportion of graduates from China will choose to stay in the UK after graduation. To do this they now need to be in a job paying 38,700 pounds per year and can have no recourse to public funds. In other words, far from taking advantage of the UK, such Chinese graduates will be adding value to British businesses and the British economy. One of my graduates who chose to stay is now a bank manager and a paragon of middle class respectability, obsessed with showing me photos of his property and his cars. Another is a Finance Consultant for BlackRock, the investment managers, helping to keep the world’s money flowing through London.

Yet the truth is that 80% of young Chinese graduates from UK universities return home to China after completing their studies. A case study from my school is a young lady called Wang Xiao Yu (Ada), who completed a BA and than an MA in Education and Psychology at the London University Institute of Education and is now determined to make her contribution to the improvement of education in China. This I see as the perfect bridge of friendship, where a UK university has clearly benefited for 5 years from this young lady’s passionate commitment to learning and research and now China stands to benefit from all the knowledge and experience she will bring home.

*Wang Xiao Yu (Ada), bringing knowledge in Education and Psychology back to China*

For me, there is every reason to continue to grow these academic bridges of understanding and co-operation between two countries with such deep cultures of learning. It saddens me whenever we hear performative and unsubstantiated rumours in some areas of the British media that are stirring up resentment or suspicion of China, and the Chinese people. The result of such rumours, which always seem to fade shortly after grabbing fear-mongering headlines, can so easily be needless acts of racist abuse.

The good news is that when British and Chinese academics do connect and co-operate great things happen. Recently there was a major scientific breakthrough coming out of groundbreaking research jointly led by researchers from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and the Kunming Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Working together, sharing talents and research techniques they completed a mapping of the DNA of flowering plants, the tree of life! This has enabled them to analyse the DNA of 9,500 plant specimens, including extinct plants. There is now the potential for the genetic study of 400 million plant specimens.

Let’s just take this spirit of co-operative research one stage further. The team have now made all of this data freely available to the general public and the scientific community. The capacity for all sorts of further research into biodiversity and agriculture and medicine this represents is incalculable. The tragedy is that it is the sabre rattling and vacuous abuse that reaches the media headlines, not epic stories like this of inspirational Anglo-Chinese understanding!

*UK and Chinese researchers jointly unravelling the DNA of the ‘tree of life’*

Very soon it will be graduation day and my students will leave. To help overcome the feelings of stress the students experience in the Exam Hall, I call it the Departure Lounge like at an airport. Get their paperwork right and they’ll be flying off to universities across the world, carrying the hopes and dreams of their families with them. Each student carries within her or himself the seed of new growths of understanding and co-operation. That’s why the work that we do together as SACU and the work of our sister friendship organisations really matters. Without us, there would only be stony ground. We nurture and grow an environment of friendship in which the potential for partnerships like the plant DNA project can take root and flower.

*SACU is nurturing an Anglo- Chinese environment where shared learning can take root.*

January 5, 2024January 6, 2024

So much to learn from each other.

One of the key things that drives me in my work for SACU is the knowledge that there is so much the people of China and the people of Britain could benefit from if we had genuine opportunities to learn from each other.

I was reminded of this recently. One of my former students now studying Urban Design in a UK university sent me her essay about Environmental Impact Assessments – which are legal mechanisms used in the UK to protect vulnerable environments. And there in one amazing paragraph she was paralleling and comparing an annual report into Teeside Incinerators and the Yangtze River Three Gorges project and thinking her way through both of these to next step improvements in the EIA process in both countries and globally.

So in this blog, let’s explore a little more the potential benefits for both peoples that might happen if educators from both cultures sat down and shared educational thinking. We can start with the legendary excellence of Chinese students in Mathematics. And it really is legendary. In the UK out of all A Level entries only 1.8% are for Further Mathematics, the gold standard of global mathematics. In my school alone at least half of the cohort will study this demanding A Level and no grade has slipped below B so far.

Let’s first of all entirely dismiss any ‘genetic’ explanations. There is no Maths gene. There are however lessons to be learned in two crucial areas. The first is the quality of Chinese mathematics teaching. Indeed the British government recognised this in 2014 when it organised something called the ‘Shanghai-England Maths Exchange’ enabling Shanghai teachers to deliver training and model their teaching methods in the UK and enabling English teachers to experience Shanghai Maths first hand. The benefits of this simple ‘people to people’ project were transformative. One of the English teacher participants , Afshah Deen, said,

“Seeing maths teaching in Shanghai and observing how lessons are planned and then discussed and refined by teachers there has been the most interesting and rewarding professional experience of my career. I’ve literally questioned everything I’ve done for the last eight years of teaching. It’s really inspired me to be a better maths teacher.”

Collaborative learning improves the school’s Maths learning culture

The second strength that I believe the UK education system could learn from Mathematics in China is around ‘cultural capital’. This is the idea that when individuals are learning in the classroom they will be influenced by a myriad of thoughts and feelings formed from multiple encounters with the cultural eco-system they grew up in. And it’s the simplest little things in this cultural eco-system that make a difference. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has spoken of an anti Maths culture in the UK. This is made up of hundreds of jokes, instagrams and playground banter where Maths will be ‘dissed’ and dismissed. The limit of the Prime Minister’s thinking is to believe that you can solve this problem by simply introducing more of the same, without challenging the cultural assumptions.

An exchange with China would allow new cultural approaches to be learned. On prime-time Chinese television there are game show competitions for young people built around mathematics. When my IGCSE maths teacher gives out homework he links it into shared culture, ranging from the architectural achievements of the past to the engineering accomplishments of modern China. Students are very ready to co-operate and share their thinking and solve Maths problems together. The result of this cultural capital is that Maths classes in my school often achieve the quality of what I call ‘flow’, where the students are utterly absorbed in problem solving.

On the other hand part of my work for the last ten years has involved training Chinese teachers in international teaching methodologies. I have seen first hand how learning from each other has made such teachers into outstanding practitioners now confidently able to blend the best of the west with the best of the east.

Chinese teaching methodologies are excellent at memorisation techniques, but we have taken this one step further by adding the international strategy of ‘retrieval practice’, requiring students to keep in mind learning from previous topics. Chinese teaching methodologies do develop debate and discussion, but we have extended the skills of our students in this area by placing more emphasis on collaborative learning where students discuss and problem solve in independent teams. Chinese teaching methodologies do support cognitive development, but we have enhanced critical and creative thinking by adding to the teacher toolkit in these areas. There is a very simple but powerful strategy developed in western pedagogy called ‘wait time’, which guides teachers to put in a pause between asking a question and taking answers. This little technique has significantly enhanced the educational benefits of questioning in our classrooms. And it all follows from a simple philosophy. Neither culture has the monopoly on good teaching strategies, so it’s better when we learn together.

Teachers successfully blend Chinese and Western learning methods

Finally let’s come back to cultural capital and an amazing flowing together of Chinese and Western thinking. From my experience the problem of how to motivate young people to become effective learners is just as important in China and in Britain. When I first came to work in Chinese classrooms I was staggered by the phenonomen of students putting their heads down and going to sleep, during a lesson! In the West I was sadly used to many different forms of lesson disruption, but never this kind of quietly checking out of learning. Investigation led me to find out it is a culturally condoned, rather than culturally approved kind of behaviour. It was accepted that if a student believed she or he couldn’t learn it was better to quietly slip into sleep rather than interrupt the learning of the class.

The underlying problem behind the poor motivation of both Chinese and English learners is the question of what happens when students believe they can’t learn. In the West students act up to stop the lesson and / or get the teacher’s attention. In China students fall asleep so that the lesson can continue. Therefore in order to address the cause and not the symptoms, I introduced a set of ideas to change the culture around ‘giving up’.

Answers to this problem can be found in the research of the American professor, Carol Dweck. Carol Dweck developed an educational strategy called ‘Growth Mind-set’. The argument is that students who fail have a ‘fixed mind set’ and believe they cannot learn. Some interpret this as a psychological strategy but I think it’s better applied to improve a school culture.Teachers must assiduously avoid any signals to students that their ability to learn is limited. On the other hand, teachers do everything they can to develop a love of taking on challenges and an attitude of persistence that helps students to never stop believing they can learn and be resilient in looking for a variety of ways to learn and understand.

I set about introducing this strategy to my school. I was in the midst of training my Chinese teachers when one of them asked, ‘Are you sure these are modern western ideas, because they are very similar to ancient Chinese thinking’. When I had finished my introduction she came to the front and talked us through a set of ideas in Chinese called ‘daxue’ or ‘Great Study’. The origin of these ideas may lie with Confucius but they were put together in a systematic way by a thinker called Zhu Xi. In essence the principles are:

诚心 – Cheng Xin or Sincerity

勤奋 – Qin Fen or Diligence

刻苦 – Ke ku or Hard work

恒心 – Heng Xin or Perseverance

专心 – Zhuan Xin or Concentration

尊师 – Zun shi or Respect for teachers

谦虚 – Qian Xu or Humility.

As we discussed and reflected on these ideas we agreed that yes, these were all important ingredients of developing ‘Growth Mindset’. The advantage of this is that when we began to talk to our students about developing a better motivational and learning culture in our school we could combine both philosophies. Indeed we find that approaching Growth Mindset through Chinese thinking means that we can benefit from the echoes of these concepts within the cultural capital that our students bring to their learning.

The evidence of my experience of ten years of school leadership in both cultures, is that there is everything to gain from understanding and exchange of educational thinking, and so much to lose from ignorance and suspicion. This gives me the conviction that education isn’t the only area of society where this simple idea holds true.