Chelmsford County High School for Girls

Links with China

As a Language College, we are keen to develop and broaden our international links and to offer a wider range of opportunities for students to experience and understand a variety of cultures, as well as developing their language learning skills. We are delighted that over the past year, we have formed a number of links with China, mainly through the twinning programme between Jiangsu Province and Essex.

We now have a partner school, Furen High School, in the town of Wuxi, and we are hoping that some of our younger students will soon have email partners with whom to correspond.

Two Chinese teachers from the town of Suzhou spent a month in our school, last summer. They learnt about the English education system and also shared some of their language and culture with our students.

This summer a small group of year 10 -13 students accompanied by Mrs Chapman and Mrs Adams undertook a three week intensive Mandarin course in China, following a few days enjoying the famous sights of Beijing, they spent two weeks in Nanjing. Each day they had three hours of tuition and a variety of cultural experiences.

Though partnership between Essex and Jiangsu we have been able to offer Mandarin tuition as an extra-curricular activity to groups of Year 9, 11 and 12 students.

These are all very exciting developments and we hope that as the years progress, we will be able to extend this provision still further.