Do math, the Shanghai way

World
Europe

In the past, China has been taking lessons from the western educational system, but now the trend seems to be going in the reverse.

Some British schools are trying to emulate the successful teaching pattern in Shanghai by introducing a series of textbooks, in a subject that give UK students a headache: mathematics.

Colins' Real Shanghai Mathematics

People around the world tend to believe that most Chinese students excel at math (which isn’t necessarily true), and the BBC even invited a team of math teachers from Shanghai to join their classrooms in 2014 "to pass on some of their techniques."

Screenshots from the BBC documentary

Shanghai topped the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) exams for 15-year-olds in 2009 and 2012, leading many to believe that the "Shanghai model" of math is the most effective in the country. On the contrary, Britain only ranked 27th in math scores.

In March this year, Collins Learning and Shanghai Century Publishing Group signed an agreement at the London Book Fair to publish English translations of math textbooks used by Shanghai's primary schools.

Shanghai‍

The imported series is titled "Real Shanghai Mathematics," which will be published by the end of this November. Those textbooks will land on UK classrooms starting from January of 2018.

Translated from Shanghai’s bestselling primary mathematics program, Real Shanghai Mathematics is a primary mathematics program for Years 1-6.

A typical Chinese classroom.

Colin Hughes, the managing director of Collins Learning, said the rendition of Chinese textbooks were "significantly more demanding" than the current curriculum in UK.