UK schools eye Shanghai math books
2017-03-17 17:37
Half of primary schools in UK will adopt the traditional Chinese method of maths teaching.
An agreement to publish English translations of texts used by Shanghai's primary school math program was signed Tuesday at the London Book Fair between Collins Learning and Shanghai Century Publishing Group.
Collins is part of giant Harper Collins Publishing. Collins plans to release Real Shanghai Mathematics, a series of 36 textbooks, starting in September.
Colin Hughes, Collins Learning's managing director, called the signing "a historic moment".
"To my knowledge this has never happened in history before－that textbooks created for students in China will be translated exactly as they have been developed, and sold for use in British schools," Hughes said.
"This development arises from increasingly successful collaboration between Shanghai and the British government, aimed at raising standards of mathematics education in UK schools by adopting the excellent approach that places Shanghai as a world leader in mathematics teaching."
Since 2014, over 400 teachers, leaders and researchers from China and Britain have been on academic exchange visits. Educators in both countries said their schools benefitted from the exchange.
Students from Shanghai have consistently scored well in the Program for International Student Assessment, a triennial exam of 15-year-old students that helps evaluate education systems worldwide.
The textbooks already have been used by the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics to train British teachers.
The UK education department announced a four-year, 41 million pound ($50.3 million) Teaching for Mastery Program last year to develop techniques used in Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong for use in 8,000 UK primary schools. Collins hopes to gain the program's endorsement for its new textbook series.
Collins Learning described Real Shanghai Mathematics as a rigorous program that "emphasizes complete mastery of basic numeracy knowledge and skills to allow vastly accelerated progression to advanced numeracy".
Shanghai maths book to be exported to UK
2015-02-28 11:27China.org.cnWeb Editor: Li Yan
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Parents browse through piles of the supplementary textbook "One Lesson, One Exercise (yi ke yi lian)" in a bookstore in Shanghai on Feb. 26, 2015. (Photo/xinmin.cn)
"One Lesson, One Exercise (yi ke yi lian)" on different subject areas are pictured in Shanghai on Feb. 26, 2015. (Photo/xinmin.cn)
A famous supplementary textbook on maths from Shanghai will soon be published in the UK this year, as part of the country's efforts to learn from the city's world-class mathematics teaching methods.
The English version of the book "One Lesson, One Exercise (yi ke yi lian)" will be designed on the base of the original Chinese version and integrate with the local curriculum as well.
The Chinese version of the book has been an essential part to the teaching and learning process for many Shanghai teachers and students for some 2 decades.
UK's education authorities have started to learn from Shanghai's maths teaching since last year, as the city is one of the top performers in the Program for International Student Assessment (Pisa) rankings.
Later this February, 29 maths teachers in Shanghai will also visit selected primary schools in the UK to share their teaching techniques.
Shanghai maths book to be exported to UK
( chinadaily.com.cn/china.org.cn ) Updated: 2015-02-28 16:26:24
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Chen Zhuhui, Shanghai maths teacher is giving maths lesson at St Vincent's Catholic Primary School.[Photo by Wang Mingjie]
A famous supplementary textbook on maths from Shanghai will soon be published in the UK this year, as part of the country's efforts to learn from the city's world-class mathematics teaching methods.
The English version of the book "One Lesson, One Exercise (yi ke yi lian)" will be designed on the base of the original Chinese version and integrate with the local curriculum as well.
The Chinese version of the book has been an essential part to the teaching and learning process for many Shanghai teachers and students for some 2 decades.
In 2012, UK 15-year-olds ranked 26th in maths among global rivals on the Program for International Student Assessment, issued by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD)since 2000 to evaluate the skills of young students across the globe.
Shanghai's students, on the other hand, ranked top overall in maths, reading and science on the 2012 exam.
The OECD says children of working-class families in Shanghai are on average better at maths than middle class children in the UK.
UK's education authorities have started to learn from Shanghai's maths teaching since last year.
Sixty of China's top math teachers from Shanghai were invited to selected British schools to share their skills in a bid to lift standards in Britain in September 2014, while some British teachers flew to Shanghai to study teaching methods in China.
Later this February, another 29 maths teachers in Shanghai will visit selected primary schools in the UK to share their teaching techniques.
Related: Shanghai-style maths lessons promoted in UK
Chen Zhuhui, also known as "Mr Bean" by all his students, starts his Shanghai-style maths lesson, with a mental arithmetic activity. He invites one student from each group to compete against the others to answers questions at the fastest speed.
This fast-paced activity lights up the whole class immediately, and Chen appears to blend in very well with the students throughout the one-hour session. The way Chen interacts with his students gives the impression that he has been teaching at the school for a long time.
Chen joined St Vincent's Catholic Primary School in central London three weeks ago.
According to Chen, familiarity with his students didn't come easy. He said that the first week was the most difficult since he was new to the school.
Shanghai Maths textbooks from Collins
Published February 3, 2015 by
Joshua Farrington
Collins Learning will publish a new a series of maths textbooks for use in UK schools, Shanghai Maths, based on the system used in China.
Last autumn, schools minister Nick Gibb controversially
criticised UK education publishers for their textbook offer and urged them to emulate the high-quality textbooks of Shanghai, Singapore and Finland.
Collins' Shanghai Maths series will be a resource which covers the entire UK curriculum, from years one to 11. To produce the series, Collins has worked with Professor Lianghuo Fan to translate and adapt the Shanghai Maths programme One Lesson, One Exercise, published by East China Normal University Press, so that it correlates with the UK National Curriculum.
The Shanghai Maths textbooks have been used in Shanghai schools for the past 24 years. Professor Fan said: "The series will help students lay a strong foundation, nurture deep learning and develop problem solving skills in mathematics."
In 2012, Shanghai was top in maths according to the Programme for International Student Assessment survey, whereas the UK was in 26th place. Two groups of government ministers, along with teachers and other education professionals have visited the city in the past 12 months to find out more about local maths teaching.
Collins Learning m.d. Colin Hughes said: "We are delighted to be working with Professor Fan and East China Normal University Press to adapt their world-leading content for UK students. We believe this collaboration can make a significant contribution to raising young peoples’ mathematics performance – which, as we all know, is essential to their future success in learning, and in life."
Shanghai Maths will be published in summer 2015.
Chinese maths textbooks to be translated for UK schools
HarperCollins signs ‘historic’ deal with Shanghai publishers amid hopes it will boost British students’ performance
Benjamin Haas in Hong Kong and
Sally Weale
Mon 20 Mar 2017 15.39 GMTFirst published on Mon 20 Mar 201709.42 GMT
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British students may soon study mathematics with Chinese textbooks after a “historic” deal between HarperCollins and a Shanghai publishing house in which books will be translated for use in UK schools.
China’s wealthy cities, including Shanghai and Beijing, produce some of the world’s top-performing maths pupils, while British students rank far behind their counterparts in Asia.
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HarperCollins’s education division
signed an agreement to release a series of 36 maths books at the London Book Fair, the state-run China Daily reported, with Colin Hughes, managing director of Collins Learning, calling it “historic”.
“To my knowledge this has never happened in history before – that textbooks created for students in China will be translated exactly as they have been developed, and sold for use in British schools,” the
China Daily quoted Hughes as saying.
The textbook deal is part of wider cooperation between the UK and China, and the government hopes to boost British students’ performance in maths, Hughes added.
Chinese schools, represented by those in the wealthier cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, as well as Jiangsu province,
ranked fifth in maths scores, according to a recent global study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The UK lagged far behind, ranking 27th and tied with Portugal and the Czech Republic in maths achievement.
The report also noted that one in four students in China, along with Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, receive top marks in maths, a higher proportion than anywhere else.
Experts worry the textbooks alone cannot solve Britain’s maths problem, saying the fundamentals of the education systems are too different.
“Britain and China’s education evaluation system is very different. In the required subjects, Chinese schools follow a high standard of uniform requirements because most of the Chinese students need to participate in the university entrance examination, so mathematics will be too difficult [for the British],” said Xiong Bingqi, an education expert at Shanghai Jiaotong University and the vice-president of the 21st Century Education Research Institute.
“The British education system puts too much emphasis on individuals and ignores problems of the collective.”
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Last year the British government announced it would
spend £41m to support half of England’s primary schools in adopting maths teaching methods from Asia. The Department for Education (DfE) has also
flown in teachers from China, in an attempt to improve the UK’s flagging standards.
But even China’s own commentators have warned their system is not perfect.
“Some uphold Chinese education as being better than that in western countries, it is also not without its problems,” said an
opinion piece in the Beijing Youth Daily following the announcement of the textbook deal. “It lacks respect for children’s creativity and is too exam-oriented.”
The book deal is not the first to bring south Asian-style maths to English classrooms. Oxford University Press already publishes Inspire Maths, a primary maths programme based on the Singapore maths series My Pals are Here! which is used in almost 100% of Singapore’s state primary schools.
The textbooks from Singapore, and now China, will help deliver the DfE’s ambitions for half of all primary schools in England – more than 8,000 in total – to adopt what is known as the south Asian mastery approach to maths.
The schools minister, Nick Gibb, has described it as “one of the most valuable education initiatives undertaken by our government over the past few years”. The mastery approach involves a whole-class approach to teaching maths. Each lesson concentrates on a single mathematical concept, which is covered in great depth, and the class does not move on until every child has mastered the lesson.
In Singapore or Shanghai a class will, for example, spend an entire lesson learning about the commutative law of multiplication. Pupils taught in England might learn how to do the maths, without being taught the law behind it. English pupils are also moved on more quickly from one topic to another and children in the same class are often given different work to do depending on their progress.
English pupils may get the same books, but critics say there are significant differences between south Asian schools and those in England, which make it difficult to replicate the mathematical success of Singapore and Shanghai.
In a Shanghai school, if a pupil has not fully understood the lesson, there is often additional teaching on the same day to ensure they are ready to start the next day’s lesson at the same point as the rest of the class. Resources are likely to be more limited in an English classroom.
Another key difference is that students in south Asian countries are likely to get far more homework, which reinforces the day’s studies. Many will also have private tutoring and attend weekend school.
There are also huge differences in teacher training and deployment. Primary school maths teachers in Shanghai are specialists, who will have spent five years at university studying primary maths teaching. They teach only maths, for perhaps two hours a day, and the rest of the day is spent debriefing, refining and improving lessons. English primary teachers, in contrast, are generalists, teaching all subjects, all of the time.
The government’s £41m funding over four years will be used to train 700 teachers to support schools in maths mastery, to buy textbooks and pay for teacher release so teachers can be trained. Some experts have questioned whether the money might be spent more usefully, particularly given concerns about school funding.
The UK publisher’s interest in Chinese textbooks has been a source of pride for China in the past. When HarperCollins published
a supplementary maths text in 2015, the Global Times, a nationalist newspaper controlled by the Communist party, said: “Textbook’s publication in UK validates Chinese education.”
