In today’s talking points: An education lecturer at UNSW call for selective primary schools; Chinese Education is being exported abroad; Chinese parents are willing to spend fortunes on children’s higher education overseas; A college in eastern China uses big-data analysis to better subsidize underprivileged students.
Call for Selective Primary Schools in NSW
Jae Jung, an education lecturer at UNSW, has urged the NSW government to consider establishing selective primary schools for talented students. Dr Jung believes talented students are being let down by the current education system, especially at the primary school level where gifted students can only enter into accelerated programs from year 5. According to Dr Jung, selective primary schools for high-achieving students would help alleviate this problem and in the long term also help Australian education correct its declining performance at the international level.
Read more at: BrisbaneTimes
Exporting Chinese Education
Education in China is big business, and this business is beginning to make its way abroad. For many years now Chinese students have ranked highly in mathematics internationally, and now the educational models and materials responsible for these results are being exported. This year, Chinese-sourced mathematics textbooks will be added to the teaching materials available to UK primary schools. As part of this initiative, select UK teachers will be sent to Shanghai for training on how to use the material.
Chinese higher education is also moving abroad. Earlier this year, Peking University purchased a site at Oxford University that will opened as the HSBC Business School of Peking University. The school will open in August 2018. This was the first time that a Chinese university has independently financed construction and management of a school abroad. Additionally, Xiamen University has built a new campus near Kuala Lumpur, that had its first intake of students last year.
Read more at: The Globe and Mail
Chinese parents willing to spend USD100K on children’s higher education abroad
According to HSBC’s recent report on “The Value of Education”, parents in China are prepared to spend USD100,000 on their children’s higher education abroad. Out of which, 60 percent will be spent on their children’s undergraduate education and 40 percent on postgraduate education. The parents’ funding comes from either savings or investments, or specific education savings or investment plan. To make this happen, Chinese parents are most ready globally to make personal sacrifices to fund their children’s studying abroad experience. One in three Chinese parents say they have either drastically reduced or completely stopped leisure activities or holidays so as to pay for their children’s education. However, despite these sacrifices, the report indicates that 70 percent still worry that they are not doing enough for their children, which is 13 percent higher than the global average.
See more at: ChinaDaily
College in eastern China uses big-data analysis to better subsidize underprivileged students
Dubbed the “invisible aid”, the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) introduced a big-data analysis system to identify students in financial difficulty and to subsidize them privately. Initially the system simply compared each student’s spending to the average amount students spent in a given month. However, USTC quickly saw flaws in the approach as students on a diet or returning home to eat might be mistaken for struggling financially. Since then, USTC included the number of meals a student eats and the amount of money he or she spends on average, and then compared these data with the average for similar students. For instance, if a student eats 70 meals in a month, the system will compile the data for all those who had 70 meals that month and compare the student’s spending against the average for that group. If the amount is far lower than the average, that student will be suspected to be in financial difficulty. According to figures released by the student affairs office, USTC has supplied a total of RMB6 million to needy students.
See more at: ChinaDaily