China’s School Children Learn to Love English

In a sunny classroom at the Tianshan New Village No 1 Primary School in Shanghai, a boisterous class of seven-year-olds is training for China's burgeoning future - by learning English.

They sing aloud and recite essential childhood vocabulary: "bicycle", "balloon", "slide". Xu Huan, the pig-tailed star of the class, is especially fond of tongue-twisters.

"The little boy showed the little ball to the little dog," she says with studied emphasis.

The Shanghai class is in the vanguard of a new national plan to accelerate and improve English teaching for China's 130m primary school students.

They will now have to learn English from an earlier age, sometimes in bilingual classrooms that use English to teach other subjects like mathematics and history, and guided by teachers sent overseas for training, according to a new government dictate.

The intensified study of English among children will bolster an already huge industry in China, now worth about Rmb10bn ($1.2bn) in fees, teaching materials and education software, according to one recent survey.

In Beijing alone, about 200,000 people take English classes outside the school system. In Shanghai, the number of applicants last year was up 60 per cent on 2001. In the Darwinian language of Chinese officials, English is considered a crucial "survival skill" for China's future.

"English is not just a class," explains Zhu Pu, Shanghai's director of English education for primary and secondary schools. "It's a symbol of international status."

The education ministry says better English skills are needed "to prepare China's future workers to meet the demands of the global economy." Gong Yafu, of the People's Education Press, says: "India's software sells well, mainly because Indians are good at English. Chinese software is not bad, but Chinese lack English proficiency."

The problem with these ambitious plans has been in the execution. So far, only half of China's major cities, and 30 per cent of school districts nationally, have been able to expand their English teaching to begin at third grade, says Mr Gong.

Not all schools can afford to upgrade their teaching materials, and the shortage of teachers can be crippling.

Guangdong province has 20,000 primary school English teachers but needs at least 40,000 more. The situation in less developed provinces is even worse. The burden of reform will fall on the provincial and municipal authorities responsible for financing and running primary education.

Starting this autumn, Shanghai will become the first city to implement the new requirement to teach English from first grade, with five classes a week. Spending on English teaching already makes up around one-fifth of a typical Shanghai primary school's budget, and this is set to triple.

The growing opportunity has not been lost on Western educational publishers. In a partnership with the city, Oxford University Press has created English teaching materials specific to Shanghai's primary schools.

OUP is also running a course in England to address another worry for Shanghai's education ministry - the quality of its teachers. The ministry now pays for 300 to 400 teachers to attend each year.

The national perception of English as a key to international competitiveness is especially acute in China's commercial capital. According to Mr Zhu, the city is not content to compare itself to rivals such as Hong Kong and Singapore, although improved English skills will make it even more competitive against them.

Shanghai is aiming to enter what it calls the "world class of cities", like London and New York. Improving English is a top priority and the city's children are at the forefront.

For many parents, the government's new plans are not enough to equip their children for capitalism, and they are increasingly keen to invest in private English tutors.

Some domestic education entrepreneurs, meanwhile, have turned themselves into national celebrities by tapping into the mania to learn English. The most famous is Li Yang, who parades before large stadium crowds like a tele-evangelist to teach his "crazy English" classes.

Mr Li made his fortune by replacing the traditional focus on rote learning and written grammar - the main culprit for Chinese students' generally poor spoken English - with conversational English, something the education ministry has now also adopted.

But not all of Shanghai's kids want to use their new skills to compete in the anglophone world. Asked what she wants to be when she grows up, Xu Huan, the star pupil at Tianshan No 1, answers without hesitation: a soldier in the People's Liberation Army.