In a session at last week’s Association of School and College Leaders’ (ASCL) annual conference, headteachers and senior leaders were given the opportunity to speak directly to education professionals from the Chinese metropolis.
Among them was Wendy Wang, principal of Wangjing Juyuan Experimental School in Shanghai, who explained how NQTs in her district spend two days a week in a designated training school to learn from the area’s “lead teacher”.
“This lead teacher … will demonstrate to a young maths teacher how to teach, just like in a hospital a senior doctor will show young doctors how to (deal with) cases,” she said, speaking through a translator.
She also explained how schools locally compare pupils’ test results, producing a league table of local performance, while individual teachers who are not meeting expected standards might be called to appear before the director of the local education bureau.
Rob Walden, formerly assistant headteacher of King Edward VI School in Suffolk and now director of Real World Education Group, which runs China-UK school exchanges, told delegates about how teachers in China sometimes compete in profile-raising talent shows, comparing them to the X factor.
He also praised the way China promotes common, ethical values – typified by pupils of all faiths saluting the Chinese flag at the start of the school day.
He told SecEd: “Our equivalent could be bringing back the national anthem, giving it higher status. At the 2012 Olympics, the country came together, but we don’t seem to be able to sustain that.”
Elsewhere at the conference, Geoff Barton, ASCL’s general secretary, said schools in China were also looking to the UK for inspiration – particularly in embedding creativity in the curriculum.
“They are asking the big questions about education,” he said.
“They aren’t locked in debates about whether a GCSE grade 4 or 5 is equivalent to a C, or which subjects go in which buckets for which performance measure.”