This is a speech at the first ECNUAS staff meeting on Feb 15th 2022
Photo taken on Chongming island on Jan 25, 2022
At my last speech, I talked about the concept of holistic education and tried to argue that a holistic education is a quality education and that ECNUAS is on the right way towards a quality holistic education. I also talked about international understandings of holistic and quality education and described the current Chinese approach to holistic and quality education. I tried to show that these approaches are actually converging and the education in the world, be it national education and international education, develops towards a shared vision. Particularly, I pointed out that the Chinese education, just like the ECNUAS education pursuit, is becoming more holistic. At least a range of recent policies have set up a clear pathway for the whole system and schools towards a holistic Chinese education.
“Wu Yu Bing Ju- Five Simultaneous Cultivations” (五育并举) is probably the simplest and best term to capture the essence of the ongoing policy and practice changes. Develop learners morally, intellectually, physically, aesthetically, and labor in an all-round and balanced way.
Taking these five lenses to examine our ECNUAS education results, probably we would find that we have a long way to go before we eventually reach the stage of a high-quality holistic education. We have made some progresses and achievements in some areas, however, probably we also lost some ground in other important areas.
For example, in the area of curriculum development in the compulsory education sections, I see some pillars are stronger than others. The moral and character education curriculum of the school may lack a consistent and comprehensive design, leaving teachers in different grades and divisions doing piecemeal work that does not really add up. In the academic curriculum, some subjects are obviously stronger than others. These strong subjects have more experienced teachers, better teaching and assessment practices, whereas those weaker subjects seem to struggle to some degree in various aspects. Our PE education is not aligned with the national curriculum and to some extent neglects government curriculum requirements, this puts our students in a unfavored place when they have to take part in compulsory PE tests. Labor curriculum is still missing, and must be established as soon as possible.
In the high school, although the IBDP programme and other school-based components set up a structure of holistic curriculum, the effectiveness and quality of each part varies. We continuously waste a lot of time dealing with some students’ moral, motivational and behavioral problems in a way that supposedly rigorous academic requirements have to be watered down. The subjects that could have been strong in this bilingual school haven’t established its strength, for example, the English curriculum and teaching and learning hasn’t effectively supported the learners linguistically and academically. The PE programs and facilities in the high school received complaints from students and parents. Changes must be considered as soon as possible.
Across the school, we are not too confident in our students’ performance in a variety of government and international tests, such as quality assurance tests, Zhongkao, and IBDP global examinations. Regardless of different opinions on governmental and standardized tests, the results of them are closely paid attention to by all stakeholders of the school, including the government, society, the Board of the school, parents, and students themselves. Undeniably, intellectual development is one equally important part of the Five Simultaneous Cultivations, so if this intellectual part isn’t given its justice in our school, our education cannot be seen by the society as a success.
While we will definitely work on moral, physical, aesthetical, and labor education for our students, academic performance of the students is mostly judged by parents, the government, and the society. The task is quite urgent, some signs that we have been seeing recently aren’t encouraging. For instance, some high achieving students complain about attitudes and behaviors of those unmotivated students, the government officials urge us to improve our educational results measured by their tests. In the Chinese society that meritocracy is one of the major social norms, it is dangerous for a school to form a reputation that the students are good at arts, music, and some sports but not competitive at academic study. Also, being only strong at these few aspects doesn’t mean well-round development or Five Simultaneous Cultivations.
The recent assessment data in several key grades also showed us an alarming sign. It appeared that our students did not have too much advantage measured against the tests or exams conducted by either the Jiading Education Bureau, or by the Shanghai government, or by global agencies such as IB and Cambridge. The school leadership team clearly understands that this situation could greatly impact our students’ competitiveness locally and globally when they have to compete for further education opportunities. We also understand that these unsatisfactory results could negatively impact the reputation of the school.
There are promising achievements too, we want to see more of these. For example, in the 1st Mock Grade 9 ZhongKao in January 2022, Ethic and Law, English, and Chinese were leading across schools in the Jiading district. The math result of the primary school in the quality assurance test in June 2021 appeared leading across schools in the district. In the high school, the November re-take AS exam results improved significantly, compared with the unsatisfactory first result. Our teachers and students learned a good lesson through this re-take experience and hopefully they would perform even better in the upcoming A-Level global exam. This year’s IBDP teacher-predicted grades are promising, although in the past three years our IBDP results were not encouraging at all. The high school academic team is working with DP2 teachers to ensure these predictions will be actually achieved by students so that a better school record would be established.
Teachers, these cold assessment numbers might not be as interesting as a sports game, a music concert, or an Arts exhibition, which are equally important in the school education. However, please remember intellectual development should also be an important pillar of our education and better students’ academic performance is so much expected by our clients, stakeholders of the school, and the society. The society won’t give us too much time to hesitate, we should understand the urgency, figure out what we lack, and work out improvement plans immediately.
The school started injecting in resources to improve the academic achievements of our students. We hired expert teachers from Xuhui district to support our inexperienced teachers planning, teaching, and assessment. We help teachers in all subject groups be connected with teaching study researchers in the district and invited them observed our classes and provided their improvement suggestions. We also began hiring full-time expert teachers who will be teaching alongside others. From this year, you will see senior, expert teachers joining the school to strengthen the teaching and teacher development of a range of key subjects. The school will also push young teachers to grow, improve, and become expert teachers themselves. We understand that teachers’ success implies student success. Therefore, the school will whole-heartedly support teachers’ actions to develop and improve.
We should also learn from the assessment data. In the primary and middle school, analysis of assessment data is carried out after every mid-term, final, and government exams. Reflection meetings are organized to work out improvement plans and sometimes individual students’ improvement plans. The teachers, especially the teachers of graduating Grade 5 and Grade 9 are working extremely hard to prepare students for the upcoming tests and exams in the semester. In the high school, we have been using assessment data to inform teachers’ reflection and the leadership team’s decision making. As a result, teachers are asked to better align the assessment with the teaching and learning in classes, to better design the exam papers so as to they are commensurate with students’ knowledge and skills, and to better align term exams with final global exams using real exam papers. Teachers are also asked to provide expected grades before exams so the teachers are hold accountable for the quality of assessment they created. We also introduced a standardization process so inaccurate results could be adjusted. All these measures aim to improve students’ academic performance.
There must be other strategies to make improvement. I would like to give this task to each divisional principal. You should discuss with each subject group leader and create needed methods or plans for this particular subject group. If the training system for students doesn’t make sense, then please urge the group leader to refine it; if one teacher in the group is visibly weak, then please help the teacher to improve or urge the HR department to find a replacement if needed; if some students need individual support, then please work out individual plans and provide these suggestions to students and parents. Each teacher should have a higher and clearer goal of student achievement, and this goal should inspire the teacher to improve the teaching and better student learning support. If the teacher is shy to make such inspiring goal, then the group leader or the divisional principal should give one.
Big improvement in a relatively short period of time is possible, given that right actions are taken timely. I personally experienced closing a huge math achievement gap between two parallel classes in one year. What I did was to change the degree of difficulty of teaching and practicing materials in line with the government examination. One expert teacher used to confide in me how she improved the math achievement of one grade from the middle level in a district to the first place. What she did was to create a student training/drilling system, or in other words, she customized all homework questions according to this group of students’ learning needs. One principal told me his secret of bringing a school from 7th place to the 1st place in the district ranking over two years. He also worked on a training system for those weak subjects and changed one or two teachers who didn’t live up to expectations.
This semester is a season for assessment and hence a season for student achievement. Many stakeholders would look forward to seeing our results. As I explained earlier in my speech, our attention should duly shift towards students’ intellectual development or academic performance during this semester. Divisional principals and vice principals should spend more time with subject group leaders and teachers to identify problems and work out mitigating solutions quickly. We don’t have too much time. I hope you all understand the sense of urgency that I tried my best to pass to each of you. Without strong academic performance, it is hard to say our education is holistic and of high quality; being intellectually lagging behind, it is even hard to say our education lives up to the Wu Yu Bing Ju (Five Simultaneous Cultivations) expectation of the government, which many other government and non-government schools strive to meet as well.
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