校长称教育多元化及创新成为柏朗思·观澜湖国际学校成功的关键因素

    Shao Jingfeng

    windysjf@hotmail.com

    Bromsgrove School Mission Hills (BMH), which was launched in Shenzhen last year, will open its prep school this summer.

    During a press event at Mission Hills Shenzhen on Friday, Bromsgrove School headmaster Peter Clague shared the U.K. school’s latest information and its secrets to success during its history of more than 500 years.

    Bromsgrove School, which is now 540 years old, is a co-educational independent public school in the Worcestershire town of Bromsgrove, England. The school comprises of kindergarten, primary, and secondary sections for a total of around 1,700 boarding and day-school pupils, including more than 300 international students from 43 nations.

    A-level and International Baccalaureate courses are taught superbly at the school, both of which are in the top 10 in the United Kingdom, according to Clague. He said the school is also ranked among the top four sports school in the country.

    “Diversity, choice and innovation would be the three keys to Bromsgrove’s success today,” said Clague who is also the headmaster of BMH.

    “The sort of young people we want to produce at Bromsgrove School Mission Hills are the same sort we currently are producing at Bromsgrove U.K., that is people who are proud and respectful of their own heritage in culture, but equally accept the responsibility of being a global citizen,” the headmaster said.

    “We have a record of centuries’ success in our own country. We are excited to see that we can bring some of that experience to the project here in Shenzhen,” he said.

    Bromsgrove School and Mission Hills joined hands in Shenzhen in September 2016, relaunching the Mission Hills International School as Bromsgrove School Mission Hills, catering to the growing demand for world-class international education in the fast-growing city.

    The partnership, based on a unified ethos, entails full-scale collaboration on all levels, including school management, teacher recruitment and professional development, curriculum design and enrichment, teacher and student exchange programs.

    It was Clague’s third visit to the Shenzhen school. He also has a weekly conference with the teaching staff here.

    Clague said he had met some of the BMH preschool students and their parents here.

    “I think the children are as advanced educationally as the children of the same age back in the U.K., the difference is that the children here are bilingual. I think that gives them an enormous advantage, even over our own children back home.

    “I had the pleasure of meeting their parents on different occasions. I think they share many of the aspirations of British parents. The values Chinese people put on education is very similar to the values of those in the U.K.”

    Clague noticed that many international schools had been established in the city and said his school’s motivation is slightly different.

    “We are looking to build something unique and new, rather than just bringing the Bromsgrove curriculum here. We are looking to build from scratch our own criteria here.”

    He said the prep school curriculum will include some aspects of the Chinese educational system.

    Students of the Shenzhen school will have the chance to make cultural exchanges with their peers in the United Kingdom at the summer camp, he said.

    “We also started to make arrangements for video exchanges between children during normal classes,” he said.

    BMH is now offering 456 seats this year, from preschool one to prep school four. BMH’s executive director Bill Wang said many parents from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong have come to register with the school.