Unique high school adds luster to education hub
Print Edition
MINHANG District’s growing reputation as hub of quality education will get a boost this month when the first-ever Sino-US high school on the Chinese mainland officially opens in the District.
Shanghai Qibao Dwight High School is a partnership between Qibao High School and New York-based Dwight School. The full-time boarding school aims to provide high-quality education to the children of local and expatriate families.
Brantley Turner, vice principal of the new school and director of China programs for Dwight School, said the new facility offers a “wonderful opportunity to provide education to Chinese nationals.”
Turner added, “When we were looking at China, we didn’t want to build an international school and we never tried to get a license to establish our own school.”
Dwight School, established some 140 years ago, has expanded into a global network of campuses dedicated to personalized education with a focus on nurturing a global vision.
Pilot Sino-US high school
The school in Qibao is expecting to recruit 150 students this year. Apart from the traditional curriculum, it will offer special courses, such as tai chi boxing, visual arts, musicals and digital media.
After graduation, students can choose either to take part in the college entrance examinations in China or to study abroad.
“The school will meet the needs of local children as well as children from expat families,” said Qiu Zhonghai, principal of Qibao High School. “Its curriculum will combine the best of eastern and western education systems.”
The new school joins other high-quality institutes of learning in Minhang.
Earlier, the Shanghai Starriver Bilingual School was founded in Zhuanqiao Town. It mainly targets expat children or Chinese children returning from abroad. Apart from providing an international curriculum, the school operates a development center for primary and high school principals in Zhuanqiao, hosting seminars and training sessions to help them achieve higher goals.
“We hope our education resources will radiate across a wide area,” said Wang Nianzu, principal of the school.
Mao Ailing, mother of a 15-year-old high school student, said the family could never afford tuitions of up to 150,000 yuan (US$24,390) a year at schools like the Dwight.
“But all children have the right to receive the best possible education,” she said. “So we hope that common schools will close the gap. I think all the parents would be happy with schools pooling the best of their resources. We hope to see results soon.”
Apart from primary and high schools, the concept of high-quality education is also being emphasized at the pre-school level. The baby boom of recent years has increased public demand for more high-quality kindergartens.
According to the Minhang District Education Bureau, 10 kindergartens will be designated as “demonstration sites” this year under a program to raise education quality.
New pre-school facilities will be required to submit detailed education and development plans.
The bureau said the idea of developing a core of “super schools” would do little on its own toward improving education district-wide. What’s more important, it said, is to build parent and student trust in common schools. In fact, education experts from all over the city have been invited to the district to assess the school system and give advice on its future development.
Developing own advantages
“Minhang has a lot of schools with very high potential, and every one of them has its own characteristics and advantages,” said Shen Zuyun, an official with the bureau. “Schools are free to develop their own advantages to see how far they can push themselves toward excellence.”
Tang Shengchang, former principal of Shanghai High School, said sharing international educational resources is an important first step in improving teaching methods. Digital products and networks must be developed in classrooms, he said.
“Developed countries have introduced such networks into their classes, which is more efficient than traditional teaching methods,” he said. “If we don’t catch up with the trend, it will be impossible to attain new heights, even if we share their resources.”
Tang said it doesn’t mean that Chinese schools should blindly copy everything from their foreign counterparts.
“Teachers need to analyze what their students need and design courses to meet those needs,” he said.
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