The latest agreement sealed between Shanghai Century Publishing (Group) Co. Ltd and HarperCollins Publishers at the London Book Fair (March 14 – 16, 2017) will introduce Shanghai’s instructional approach to math into the classrooms of British primary schools.
The export of Shanghai’s mathematics textbooks is an attempt by the British government to empower young students with consolidated mathematics skills.
In July last year, the British government announced the financing of mathematics teaching with an investment of 41 million pounds, including learning from Shanghai’s educational models.
The 36 volumes of textbooks in English from Shanghai are scheduled to make their debut in September this year in some British primary schools.
By enabling students to get a good understanding of math, the textbooks will be complete with teaching approaches, an anonymous officer from HarperCollins Publishers said.
The exchange of mathematics teachers from both China and Britain started in 2014, when 73 teachers from 45 British primary schools visited their counterparts in Shanghai.
Several months on, between 2014 and 2015, 61 teachers from Shanghai visited Britain, giving presentations in 48 British primary schools on how they teach math in their home country.
The students were impressed by their flexible and individual-centered teaching methods that progressed step by step to lead the students eventually to master the skills of calculation.
Nick Gibb, the British Minister for Schools said that the teaching approaches to math used in East Asia will expand to an increasing number of young people desiring to receive a professional and quality education.
There have been nearly 30 exchange programs among schools between Shanghai and Britain. The Shanghai International Friendly Urban Youth Summer Campus has for seven consecutive years received students from Liverpool. By 2015, institutes of higher education in Shanghai had housed 1,086 British students.
Nowadays, Shanghai’s pedagogic approaches have extended far beyond the exchange between the city and Britain as countries like the United States, Finland, Malaysia and Columbia, and organizations including the UN Children’s Fund and the World Bank have all initiated Shanghai-bound learning trips.
Follow this news feed: East Asia