Opening minds, changing lives

How Mandarin lessons are making a big difference for students in English state schools

For the past five years, Thomas Sharma, a Year 12 student at Queen Mary's Grammar School in Walsall in the West Midlands of England, has been late home from school one day a week because, as a student who enrolled in the Mandarin Excellence Program (MEP), he needs to stay on for after-school Mandarin lessons.

Starting in 2016, MEP is a language program funded by the United Kingdom's Department for Education and delivered through state secondary schools in England.

Students on the MEP are required to acclimatize themselves to the intensive nature of the project, with an average of eight hours of work per week, which could consist of in-classroom lessons, after-school teaching, self-study, and more.

At first, Sharma found almost everything about Chinese difficult, as he had no previous experience of the language. The characters, grammar, writing, and tones were a whole new world until he got used to the strangeness and began taking pleasure in their novelty. "The absolute enjoyment keeps me motivated," he said.

Interest can be the best teacher, and Sharma has grown to become a prominent Chinese speaker among his peers. In May, he won first prize in the advanced category of the 2023"Chinese Bridge" Mandarin Proficiency Competition for UK secondary school students.

After the awards ceremony, people flocked around him, congratulating him in Chinese as if he were a native speaker, with his teacher proudly telling China Daily that Sharma could understand all the conversations.

The boy who, at the age of 12, chose to join MEP out of curiosity is now considering taking Chinese at degree level. "Regardless of what I end up doing, I would really love to have some kind of Chinese elements in there," he added.

Sharma's achievements echo the original aim of MEP to create a cohort of pupils on the path to fluency in Mandarin, and he is by no means the only one.

As of 2021, the first phase of the program has seen a total enrollment of around 6,500 students from 75 schools across England, growing from a presence with fewer than 400 participants in 14 schools when it was set up, according to an independent evaluation report on the program's first five years.

In 2021, MEP was awarded a further three years of funding, and from August 2021 to May 2023, has welcomed around 3,500 new participants, according to Confucius Institute for Schools at the University College London Institute of Education (UCL IOE CI), the program's lead delivery partner.

Pupils who chose to give up some of their free time for MEP are aware of the benefits brought by Mandarin. "Learning Chinese, especially in the finance world, will open many new doors for me because, obviously, the Chinese market is somewhat new to the European and the Western world," said Hojiakbar Sadullaev, a Year 12 student at Dartford Grammar School in Kent. "So, personally, having a good knowledge of Chinese allows me to access more opportunities."

A better future also motivated Pijus Okunevicius, a Year 8 pupil at Kingsford Community School in Newham, East London, as he said the business world is definitely related to China, and with Chinese, he can be more recognizable. The learning journey has not always been smooth but the goal of success drives him forwards.

"You can never succeed at something when the end is not hard to get. If it's easy, you can give up. If it's hard, you always keep trying, and I always have a future," he said.

For Sharma, he said he had never viewed the language as a functional thing, but learning Chinese had broadened his horizons. "One of the big things about a language is when you learn it, you often start to look at the world. And Chinese did invite you to consider things from a different perspective," he explained.

These advantages have long been recognized by Joan Deslandes, the head teacher of Kingsford, who has been dedicated to promoting Chinese learning in her school since 2000, when Kingsford became the first school in the UK to introduce compulsory lessons of Mandarin into the curriculum.

Looking to the future

"In the year 2000, China was about to join the World Trade Organization. It was very clear to me that engaging with China is going to bring our young people benef its that we had not anticipated, given that China was the most populated country in the world," she said.

"The opportunities have been phenomenal, not just in terms of their employability, but in terms of the friendships and the understanding that they have in terms of their lives as global citizens who are learning about making an ef ective contribution in a harmonious world where there is mutual respect," she added. For pupils at Kingsford, as Deslandes put it, these gains mean more.

"Given that a significant proportion of Kingsford's students are of a working-class background and face socio-economic deprivation, it is imperative that we strive to open new avenues of possibility for our young people," she said. "In the changing global economic context, the teaching of China's language and culture is one way through which this is being achieved."

Yang Caiqing, coordinator of MEP at Central Foundation Boy's School in the London Borough of Islington, addressed a similar point.

As an MEP teacher with six years of experience, Yang found her students, especially those from underprivileged backgrounds, have become more confident, given that MEP, as a program that only runs in the state sector, can empower pupils to keep up with their peers in independent schools.

"I have one MEP student who was awarded a free trip to China as the winner of a Mandarin proficiency contest. This might really be a life-changing opportunity for him because, without Mandarin learning, without MEP, he may never have the chance to visit China as it is unaffordable to his family," Yang recalled. What Mandarin learning has taught her pupils, she said, is that life can be full of possibilities.

According to the evaluation report on the MEP, the 2021 GCSE exams, an academic qualification taken in the UK at the age of 16, had seen the first cohort of MEP graduates achieve notable results in Mandarin Chinese, approaching the attainment levels of pupils in fee-paying independent schools, who are generally considered to enjoy better education resources.

While in 2019, nationally, just 27 percent of state school pupils achieved grades above 8 or 9, the two bands which are aligned with the highest grade A*, versus 80 percent of private schools pupils, the MEP graduates certainly improved on the figures, as 73 percent of them made points above 8.

Prior to the MEP, the report said, Mandarin was taught in only a small number of English state schools, and proportionately, more pupils were learning the language in independent schools.

"It can be said that the MEP, or the promotion of Mandarin learning, is a new racing track for students in the fierce competition," said Yang.

Katharine Carruthers, the director of UCL IOE Confucius Institute, recalled how the MEP has been gradually built up across the country.

More than 20 years ago, when she was just a peripatetic Mandarin teacher going from school to school to deliver teaching, she could not imagine anything like the MEP.

In the run-up to its launch, she had concerns. "How can we do four hours of out-class teaching a week?" But as enough schools showed interest, the program flourished, with non-MEP schools, which develop Chinese teaching, increasing at the same time.

"The kids are motivated, and then the teachers get motivated. It's kind of a virtuous circle. It has been really successful. Really successful. I am really proud of it," said Carruthers.

Zheng Wanyin in London contributed to this story.