Fulham Cross Girls’ School in west London joined the Mandarin Excellence Programme (MEP) last summer, with the first cohort of students starting Mandarin classes in September last year. Head of School, Victoria Tully, gives an insight into the experience so far.
Joining the Mandarin Excellence Programme
We are a specialist language school with exceptional language results We currently offer French, Spanish and Arabic as well as community languages such as Farsi, Urdu and Portuguese among others, and we wanted to extend our offer to Mandarin.
As well as offering Mandarin on the curriculum through the MEP, we saw an excellent opportunity to give all Key Stage 3 classes the chance to learn some Mandarin as part of our wider enrichment offer. Now all students learn one hour of Mandarin every week.
We received great support from the Institute of Education. We also got in touch with our MEP Hub School, who advised us on timetabling, appointing a Mandarin teacher and selecting students for the MEP class.
New opportunities for students
Students have been very excited to start the programme and have settled in well. Our students speak nearly 50 different languages so the school has a very cosmopolitan and diverse community. Forty five per cent of the students are on free school meals so there is a high level of disadvantage in the school community. Despite this, the outcomes the children achieve are excellent, with the amount of 7-9 grades achieved being double the national average.
The students are hard-working and are very much looking forward to having the opportunity to travel to China through the MEP – a trip that would otherwise be well out of the financial reach of many of our girls. In addition, the girls visited the British Museum to learn about the Silk Road as part of the Mandarin course and recently celebrated the Chinese New Year with a visit to Chinatown.
We are hoping that there will continue to be a great uptake for Mandarin. We also want to share the joy of learning Mandarin with the wider school community by making it accessible for everyone to join classes, clubs and opportunities to celebrate Chinese culture.
Importance of language learning
We believe that learning multiple languages is crucial for students’ development. It not only helps them become well-rounded members of the community, but also inspires them to explore diverse cultures and equips them with the academic tools needed for the future. In a climate where many schools limit their language offerings to just one, introducing Mandarin to our curriculum adds a rich layer of diversity and excitement. It also presents the challenge of mastering a new writing system and immersing students in a culture that is distinctly different from Western traditions.
To any other schools considering introducing Mandarin, I would say go for it! It opens a whole world of opportunities for students.