Chinese teachers for Britain

The British Education Minister recently announced plans to spend £11 million to bring maths teachers over from China to teach in UK schools. She hopes that the Chinese, who will be recruited among English-speaking schoolteachers in Shanghai, will be able to stop the decline in maths skills among British children.

According to the last survey by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2010, children in the Shanghai region of China ranked highest in the world for maths, and also topped the list for science and reading. British kids have fallen to 28 (out of 65 countries) in maths and 25th in reading, although they do better at science, coming 16th. Five Asian countries or regions (Shanghai, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan) were in the top ten countries overall, with Finland coming 3rd, Canada 6th and New Zealand 10th.

The plan to employ Chinese teachers has brought a mixed response in Britain. One or two people have questioned whether the teachers will speak good enough English to teach in Britain. But far more people worry that the teachers will not be able to pass on their skills simply because British children are not as well disciplined as Chinese youngsters and will not listen to what their teachers tell them. Many British people feel that the decline in maths and reading skills is a sign of the general decline in the education system because of teachers not being strict enough.

However, some Britons have also questioned whether Chinese education is as good as it is generally considered to be. For one thing, the PISA survey concentrates on Shanghai, not on the whole of China. China’s largest city is its wealthiest too, and its best educated and most competitive. Further, more than half of Shanghai's children come from poorer migrant families and do not participate in the PISA survey. Another criticism is that Chinese education is based on memorisation rather than analysis and creativity, which means that students get good results in exams but may not be so good at solving real problems when they start to work. On the other hand, many people point out that traditional discipline and emphasis on memorisation and exams were exactly the kind of educational methods that used to be employed in British schools – when standards are assumed to have been higher.

The report reminded me of a plan, a few years ago, for American state schools to teach children Mandarin so that the US would be more competitive. Critics of the plan said it would be a waste of money as it was unlikely many Americans would learn to speak Mandarin as well as the Chinese were learning to speak English. They felt it would be better to spend the money on improving maths skills.

Interestingly, at a time when more westerners are conscious of a decline in local school performance in comparison with China, many Chinese are beginning to question their own education system and comparing it unfavourably with western models. In an article in The Observer two months ago ("Chinese schooling wins praise - but not from nation's parents or educators"), one Beijing mother said she was envious of British schoolchildren who were taught to discover things on their own rather than simply be coached for exams. Lao Kaishing, a professor at Beijing Normal University, said Chinese schools had limited resources and put them all into improving children's exam scores rather than into raising their problem-solving abilities or interpersonal skills.

I cannot help wondering whether the way language is taught is the key to the differences between Chinese and British education. UK schoolkids start writing stories and essays when very young. They make a lot of spelling mistakes - and continue to do so even when older - but they become pretty good at expressing themselves. Chinese kids, needing to learn thousands of characters, have less time for free expression because of all the rote learning they have to do.

Anyway, it seems to me that each culture could learn from the other when it comes to education, so interest in how things are done elsewhere can only be a good thing.

The other world language

All around Asia there seems to be an irreversible expansion in the use of English. Even corners of the continent that resist Anglo-Saxon-dominated capitalism are not immune. North Korea’s national news agency, Naenara, regularly publishes articles in English in order to reach a wider audience. English is used for propaganda on the banners displayed at international sports matches in Pyongyang. However, we should be cautious about assuming that the growth of English is inevitable.

For one thing, the language gap between Asia’s influential, affluent elite and its urban and especially rural poor remains huge. Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, has middle-class areas where families use English more than any other language, but it has far more areas where children get very little schooling at all, let alone in English. While every child in Seoul studies English, there is a big contrast between some wealthy suburbs south of the river (Kangnam), where there is an English-language kindergarten on almost every street, and the older, poorer Kangbok districts to the north where it can be hard to find a shopkeeper or taxi-driver who understand even a few words of English. English-language skills are often cited to explain the rapid modernisation of India’s economy, but it must be remembered that perhaps no more than 4% of the population can use the language proficiently.

For another, as British linguist David Graddol points out, while English continues to grow as a second language, the proportion of the world’s population speaking it as a first language is actually falling. Hindi and Arabic speakers are increasing faster. Chinese has far more first-language speakers, and while population growth in China is slowing, the number of non-Chinese learning Mandarin is exploding.

It has been estimated that over 30 million people are currently studying Chinese. South Koreans are especially enthusiastic, aware that their country now does more trade with China than America. But Mandarin-learners are also growing in the UK, where there are now over 80 secondary schools teaching the language. At Hawkesdown House, a private school in an affluent part of London, four-year-olds are learn it. Some British parents even hire Mandarin-speaking nannies for their children. Still greater interest can be found in Australia and New Zealand, where courses for European languages and even Japanese struggle to compete. America is not known for its enthusiasm for foreign languages, but the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently considered allocating $1.3 billion for Chinese language and culture classes in public schools.



The strongest motivation for studying the language is economic, of course. The economies of China and several of its neighbours consistently outperform the EU and US. Recently the Asian Development Bank predicted that less than 1.25% of East Asians will be living below the poverty line by 2020. The world has never seen a manufacturing expansion like the one occurring in China now, and it seems everyone wants a piece of the action. Aware of the economic and also cultural advantages to be gained from global interest in their language, the Chinese government has set up Confucius Institutes around the world. The first opened in Seoul in 2004, and there are now nearly 300.

The number of Britons studying in China has grown since 2004 from 650 to 1400. Many have business or other professional qualifications and feel that adding Chinese language skills will give them an edge over competitors. Concerned about the possibility of foreign businessmen taking jobs from its own citizens, China’s Securities Regulatory Commission now requires high-ranking executives in the financial services sector to take a government test requiring a good standard of written and spoken Chinese.



While the expansion of China’s economy looks unstoppable, it is difficult to say whether current interest in its language will continue to expand. Over 200 million people are studying English in China, and it is likely that far more of them will become proficient in the language than the number of Americans and Britons who will become fluent in Chinese. The International Herald Tribune suggested that rather than pour dollars into learning Chinese, US high schools would do better to concentrate on improving maths skills, which are now below the standard of schools in China.