Tag Archives: China

Teaching in China: bright future or end of the road?

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How will the Chinese government’s ruling that International Schools in China must teach the same lessons as Chinese-run schools affect the market for international schools in China and as a result the demand for teachers from Britain? Westminster School abandons plans for sister sites in China amid concerns about communist curriculum (inews.co.uk)

At least one school seems to have scrapped expansion plans in China, and it will be interesting to see how other UK schools with investments in China respond. There is also the question of how those Chinese citizens that can afford private education will respond to the government’s decree. Will they embrace boarding school education and ship their offspring to British schools elsewhere in Asia or even negotiate places in the ‘home country’ original school of the brand or will they think that the brand will remain a draw even if the ‘hard curriculum’ is mandated by the Chinese government. After all, private schools teach the same A levels as are on offer for free in the state system in England but parents still pay large sums for their children to attend private sixth forms. No doubt class sizes will be a consideration for parents in China just as it is in England. Access to wealth buys access to smaller classes whatever is being taught in them.

The outcome of this policy change may have ripples in the labour market for teachers in England. Fewer overseas openings may reduce the ‘brain drain’ of teachers leaving this country.  Any closure of school sites overseas may well also see teachers returning to the UK. If their former employer feels a responsibility to offer them employment on their return, then the number of vacancies in the independent sector available for new entrants to the profession will drop. This ought to be good news for the state school sector as there should be more teachers entering the profession that would need to find a teaching post in the state sector.

Of course, if the Chinese pupils just migrate to schools outside of China, then the demand for teachers will remain at present levels, and the state sector will continue to see teachers leaving for more lucrative and less burdensome teaching posts overseas.

It is probably time for the DfE to research the international transfer of teaching skills. Writing that line reminds me that in September 1968 I attended a student-run conference on ITOMS – The International Transfer of Management Skills- organised by AIESEC. Do we now need to discuss ITOTS?

Of course, there are other teacher flows than just the one from England to the rest of the world. There used to be internal transfer within the African continent and between the Caribbean and the USA.

Teaching is now a global profession as the DfE has recognised with its new approach to QTS and how it can be obtained. Should England take the lead in setting international standards for teacher preparation much as it did in the market for English Language teaching Qualifications?

Am teacher will travel

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The BBC is reporting that another top UK Independent School is opening up a campus in Asia. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35533953 I am sure that the move will make good business sense and possibly even help to keep down fees in their UK operation if it makes money.

The BBC piece concludes that there are now about 8,000 international schools around the world, teaching 4.26 million students, according to research by the International School Consultancy. Apparently, nowhere has growth been faster than in Asia.

Such has been the growth that the BBC article reports Thailand now has over 172 international curriculum schools, half of them following England’s national curriculum.

Malaysia has 142, Japan 233, and Singapore – which makes it difficult for foreigners to enrol in local schools – around 63. Myanmar could also become a hotspot – Dulwich College will open there next year. .Hong Kong which had 92 such schools in 2000, now has 171. Only South Korea has seen a retraction, with some international schools struggling to fill places.

However, the big growth has been in mainland China. From a dozen schools 15 years ago, China has some 530 English-medium international schools, catering for 326,000 students.

Now those that have heard me speak at conferences recently will have noted that I have said I was one of the few people that would be happy to see a slowdown in the Chinese economy because of this growth in schools. I have said that too many international schools in China could be a real drain on teacher supply in this country.

If we assume that the majority of the 8,000 schools worldwide use English as at least a partial medium of instruction and employ an average of ten UK trained teachers per school that would mean upwards of 80,000 trained teachers not available to work in the UK. Assuming a 10% growth, would mean 800 new schools a year and as a result possibly 8,000 teachers departing overseas to staff these schools, this plus the regular replacement numbers for posts in existing schools. This might explain some of the growth in departure rates identified in the recent NAO Report. 8,000 teachers would equate to between a quarter and a third of the output of training in England, although presumably some of the teachers going overseas will come from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, so the lower figure might be more realistic. Even so, anything above 10% would be worrying, especially in the subjects where there is a shortage of supply.

It is not clear what can be done to stem the growth of international schools and it is becoming a valuable export industry that no doubt also helps to steer undergraduates in the direction of UK universities. Perhaps we will need to import more teachers from overseas, but that won’t go down well with those worried about immigration.

What we cannot do is allow schools in deprived areas of England to be starved of teachers to satisfy the demands of the affluent middle-classes of the emerging Asian nations.

 

 

Shanghaied but not qualified: the fate of too many maths teachers?

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In their recent evidence to the School Teachers’ Review body (STRB) the government admitted that it would need an extra 5,000 or so qualified mathematics teachers for every child in a secondary school to be taught be a ‘specialist’ mathematics teacher as defined by the Department for Education. It will, therefore, be interesting to see whether the ministerial led delegation going to Shanghai to study maths teaching asks the question how many of the teachers in Shanghai are fully qualified?

With nearly one in six teachers not fully qualified in England, what gain in the OECD’s PISA tests could be achieved just by improving the quality of the teaching even to the standard where the percentage of pupils achieving the expected progress between Key Stages 2 and 4 reached the same level as for English as a subject. Of course, if the government delegation comes back clambering for more hours of mathematics teaching to match the 138 hours of teaching common across much of South East Asia, then each class will need an extra 20-22 hours of teaching per week; and that will need yet more mathematics teachers. Add in an increase required for post-16 maths teaching if all students had to study maths to eighteen and the number of extra teachers required rises still further.

On the back of this demand, the 30 schools funded to act as mathematics hubs looks like small beer given the size of the problem. The ratio is something like 100 secondary schools and 600 primary schools per hub. At that rate any individual teacher might have as much chance of attending a hub as a flood victim had of seeing the army arriving bearing a supply of sandbags. In the 1970s, almost all of the 150 or so local authorities had a dedicated professional development centre with trained maths staff, including advisers and advisory teachers. The dismantling of this infrastructure by successive governments no doubt ensured the quality of maths teaching would suffer, as it probably did in other subjects as well. If not, why are the hubs being established?

If the delegation returns from Shanghai with the message that improving maths teaching is more important that establishing free schools and wasting money on brokers trying to persuade primary schools to become an academy it will have been taxpayers money well spent.

Tackling the primary sector teaching of maths to children of all abilities is an even more challenging task than dealing with the teaching of maths in secondary schools, and I doubt whether the hub secondary schools will have the necessary expertise to tackle the challenge. However, the teaching of maths in the primary sector is part of a much larger issue in relation to how teachers for that sector are prepared.

Overall, it would help parents to know who was teaching their offspring if Qualified Teacher Status was not a universal qualification, but was limited to those subjects and phases where a teacher had been appropriately prepared. But, since the Secretary of State doesn’t believe preparation is necessary for teaching there is little chance of that happening this side of the general election.