Guangdong's new move to establish a middle school only for girls is a first in the province. Located in downtown Zhuhai, the privately-run Henglong Girls' Middle School plans to enroll 1,000 students next year, targeting middle school girls from Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao.
Girls schools have been highly regarded in western countries, and some successful examples can also be found in modern Chinese history. The director of the Zhuhai education bureau said that hundreds of years of experience in western countries have proved that the pattern of all-girls schools has little negative effect on the growth of students.
But the new school in Guangdong has triggered a heated debate over whether single-sex schools are good for adolescents, and surprisingly even whether they can lead to homosexuality.
With job markets becoming tighter in China and around the world, many parents are trying to give their children advantages at a younger and younger age. One of the biggest markets right now is summer school. BON’s Tony Zhou tells us about one very elite school here in Beijing, and how it stands out among the crowd.
The devastating 2008 earthquake in the Sichuan Province of China resulted in the collapse of thousands schools, killing more than 5,000 students. Now, more than a year and a half after the disaster, one school is set to begin anew and rise from the rubble.
A survey of the world’s top universities came out last week. The top ten was full of the usual suspects such as Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge.
But it was the rising performances of Asian universities that made a lot of the headlines. A number of schools from Hong Kong, Taiwan and the mainland all made the top 400 and Mark sat down with a professor from Peking University to get his thoughts on the current state of China’s further education.
Last week on Making The Grade, we took an in-depth look at the sudden demolition of over 20 of Beijing?s private migrant schools.
We went to Hongxin Primary School, a private migrant school that no longer exists. Its 1200 students were left scrambling for any available seat, just before the first day of school.
This is part II of our Back to School episode focusing on the education of migrant students in Beijing. We will follow the plight of two students as they face their own limited schooling options. 11-year-old Shen Ming Cong, who loves to read, write, and study English. And 6-year old Jin Hui who likes Ottoman and anything action.
Their innocence has been weighed down by questions surrounding the estimated tens of thousands of migrant children suddenly without schools in Beijing, and whose education futures continue to be unpredictable.
Schools in Harbin City, of China's northern Heilongjiang Province, are working to establish a mental health network for students. Hoping to link campus and community life, educational psychological services are being provided to minors and their parents. Susan Tart has more on this new network.