Chinese International School in Zambia(Chinese International Schoolin Zambia)Chinese International School in Zambia was jointly established by seven Chinese entrepreneurs in Zambia under the strong support of NOCFL and the Chinese Embassy in Zambia in 2009.
On Oct. 28, 2009, the school held the opening ceremony, which marks the formal foundation of the first Chinese international school featured by Chinese education. At the beginning, the school constructed Chinese Teaching Department and TCSL Department to "benefit ethnic Chinese and disseminate Chinese culture", with Chinese children and foreign Chinese learners as the primary teaching objects.
Since 2012, as local demand for China-Zambia exchange and Chinese learning increases, the school board has established the Early Childhood Department and Primary Teaching Department of Chinese International School that develop till now. This move fills the blank of Chinese education in Zambia and helps the school education cover from ethnic Chinese to non-ethnic Chinese and from children to adult, laying an economic foundation for the future development of the school and achieving good social benefit.
Add: #12 Lagos Road, Rhodes Park, P.O. Box 39558, Lusaka, Zambia
Mobile: +260975497338(Zambia) +8613916182619(China)
Tel: +260211-847863 Fax:+260211-847862
E-mail:cho@camco.cn
Chinese International School in Zambia(Chinese International Schoolin Zambia)Chinese International School in Zambia was jointly established by seven Chinese entrepreneurs in Zambia under the strong support of NOCFL and the Chinese Embassy in Zambia in 2009.
On Oct. 28, 2009, the school held the opening ceremony, which marks the formal foundation of the first Chinese international school featured by Chinese education. At the beginning, the school constructed Chinese Teaching Department and TCSL Department to "benefit ethnic Chinese and disseminate Chinese culture", with Chinese children and foreign Chinese learners as the primary teaching objects.
Since 2012, as local demand for China-Zambia exchange and Chinese learning increases, the school board has established the Early Childhood Department and Primary Teaching Department of Chinese International School that develop till now. This move fills the blank of Chinese education in Zambia and helps the school education cover from ethnic Chinese to non-ethnic Chinese and from children to adult, laying an economic foundation for the future development of the school and achieving good social benefit.
Located at the inland plateau of south central Africa, Zambia borders on Angola, Tanzania and Congo (Kinshasa). With pleasant climate, the people there are simple and honest. It is well-known in the world for its abundant copper ore and the Victoria Falls and famous in China for the "Tanzania-Zambia Railway".
Chinese International School in Zambia lies in the downtown area of the capital "Lusaka", a political, economic, cultural and traffic center of Zambia, with convenient traffic conditions and pleasant environment.
For the purpose of "inheriting Chinese culture, cultivating social elite and jointly building friendship bridge", the school creates a school-running idea and teaching method integrating Chinese, African and western culture and traditional education feature by combining local education outline and actual social demand, with Early Childhood Department, Primary Teaching Department, Chinese Department and TCSL Department as teaching units and “Love to Learn, Learn to Love”, “Learn Chinese, Double Your World” as the teaching tenet.
In terms of course design, on the basis of respecting for local custom and students' desire and promoting culture exchange between the two countries, the school offers traditional music, African dance and Chinese martial arts among others; in terms of festival activities, supplemented by western festivals, it focuses on the major traditional festivals of Africa (Zambia) and China and teaches the cultural connotation of each nationality through lively activities .
Meanwhile, in order to expand cultural exchange and meet the Chinese practicality demand, the school successfully carried out language training cooperative project with the president office, bank, army and China-invested enterprise successively by implementing the teaching policy of "Students Come In and Teachers Go Out" , and established teaching classes (language class) in local French school and community international school, which achieved good learning effect.
（1）Since its foundation in 2009, the school has been recognized by all sectors of Zambian society as well as ethnic Chinese and overseas Chinese step by step by virtue of its solid and serious basic subject teaching and language teaching, and received high praise from the embassy in Zambia and successive ambassadors in developing China-Zambia friendship and disseminating Chinese culture.
In Oct. 2010, at the first school anniversary, more than 150 persons were present, including Li Qiangmin, the then Chinese ambassador in Zambia, and his wife, Xin Yinda, vice minister of the Ministry of Education of Zambia, staff at the political office and business office of the embassy, teaching volunteers and local students. Mr. Li Qiangmin spoke highly of the ethnic Chinese in Zambia for their patriotism and raising money to set up new schools, and made comments about the unfavorable conditions like arduous environment, deficiency of fund and inadequate faculty, smooth lessons giving and acquired good social benefit. The vice minister of the Ministry of Education of Zambia appreciated China for its assistance and cooperation in education field and said Zambia welcomed and supported the operation and development of the school.
In Aug. 2011, Zhou Yuxiao, the then Chinese ambassador in Zambia inspected the construction of the school and visited the Chinese teaching volunteers assigned by the NOCFL. Ambassador Zhou proactively appraised the significant contribution in carrying forward culture and popularizing Chinese education, and expressed thanks for the brand new platform provided by the school for Zambian people to know Chinese history, culture and social life.
In Nov. 2014, Yang Youming, Chinese ambassador in Zambia, and his wife, were invited to watch the stage play "Sleeping Beauty" directed and acted by the teachers and students of the school. After the performance ended, ambassador Yang highly praised the play in terms of its originality, specialty and skillful integration of Chinese elements. The performance was very successful. In addition, he also gave an active comment on the significant contribution made by Chinese International School in carrying forward Chinese culture, promoting Chinese education and facilitating the cultural exchange between the two countries.
As the school develops in order, it receives more and more active feedbacks from the students, their parents and the cooperative organizations, and the influence of the school expands gradually in Zambia. Different from other acts of government or the China-Zambia contact in business field, the Chinese language school working hard in education field is gradually concerned by various media in the course of communication between China and Zambia; at the same time, it will have more opportunities to become the "cultural envoy" of various kinds of organization activities.
In Dec. 2013, Zhou Yuxiao, the then ambassador, and Liu Xiaoyan, current present, were invited by ZNBC to join in the live broadcast program broadcasting themed with "Chinese language in Zambia";
In 2014, BBC TV station came to the school to interview the Chinese language teaching in Early Childhood Department and Primary Teaching Department;
Between 2013 and 2014, the primary students of the school were invited to take part in such activities as "Temple Fair in Spring Festival", "Chinese Martial Arts Association Foundation Ceremony in Zambia" and "Business Reception for China-Zambia Economic Cooperation Zone of the Ministry of Commerce";
From 2012 to now, local mainstream media including ZNBC and MUVI TV station as well as domestic media like Tencent and Chinese media The Overseas Weekly reported the various practical activities organized and jointed by the school, such as visiting fire fighting forces, airport, production enterprises, TV station, farm; visiting orphanage; China-Africa traditional festival activities, graduation ceremony, martial arts performance and sports meeting.In Apr. 2015, in order to enhance China-Zambia exchange and increase cultural experience, the school plans to organize Zambian middle and primary students to have a 10-day "Beijing Culture Experience Tour". Relevant work is under preparation.
As a bridge between Chinese and Zambian civilization and a platform for China-Africa cultural exchange, the Chinese International School is being supervised and examined by all walks of life in these practical activities and spreading peace and building friendship in the process of communicating with the functional government departments and enterprise units.
From its foundation to now, the school always adheres to the basic education principle of "providing education for all people without discrimination", that is to say, it treats students equally, whatever their race, nationality and belief. The target and duty of the school teaching is to cultivate long life learner, open minded world citizen and effective communicator.
The education and teaching work of the Chinese International School in Zambia is primarily undertaken by two functional organizations, i.e. international school and language center. The school totals 28 persons, including 24 full-time Chinese and Zambian teachers (assistants) and 4 long-term part-time teachers. (Figure 25) In particular:
The school provides 28 teachers (assistants) for the Early Childhood Department and Primary Teaching Department.
There are 3 Chinese teachers in the TCSL Department and Chinese Teaching Department of the Language Center.
By the hard work of all teachers and students in recent years, the Early Childhood Department and Primary Teaching Department have had 10 classes with more than 180 full-time students, and it is expected to increase to more than 200 students in early 2015. In Nov. 2013, the school organized the first YCT Exam grade I, in which 12 students participated and 9 of them passed.
The Language Center now has 2 Chinese classes, 2 TCSL elementary classes and 2 off-campus teaching cooperative projects. During 2012-2014, the school trained more than 200 language students per year on average.
In 2013, all of the 4 students who took part in the HSK grade II and IV passed the exam;
in 2014, 25 students registered for the HSK I exam and 11 of them took part in the exam as of Dec. 1 and passed.
As the nation and people across the world increasingly desire to get to know China and communicate with China and the Chinese and overseas Chinese have more generations abroad, Chinese and its learning are receiving wide attention as an entry point and an inheritance key, which should first be cherished by our Chinese education workers.
In African continent in the southern hemisphere, Zambia, located south central Africa, communicates with China for a long time. Different from western developed countries, African nations see their own future in developing in China and doing business with China. Under this backdrop, the supporting demand of the African countries including Zambian people for Chinese language study is produced not because of the interest of a few culture hunters or a required culture of the offspring of the immigration wave, but because it is a practical survival skill and a long-term education investment. We can say that only if Africa is strategically important to China, the influence of China on various aspects of Africa as well as the demand of Africa for Chinese will continue.
Driven by this sustainable, foreseeable and increasing demand, as the only education platform characterized by Chinese teaching in Zambia, it is a very rare development opportunity in front of us.
In the face of such opportunity, in order to seize it, we decide to continue to overcome difficulties, play the subjective initiative and ceaselessly meet challenges. In the meantime, as the school is in its preliminary development stage, we still need support at different levels and from all walks of life. At the present stage, the following problems should be primarily considered: In the first place, it's talent which is the fundamental productive force. Because of the special geographical relationship, history and custom of Africa-Zambia, its economy develops relatively slowly as a whole, reflected by poor infrastructure and public social conditions, etc. As a result, the school needs to expand the stable and excellent teaching staff on one hand, but it does not have the favorable external conditions for attracting talents on the other hand. In view of the school running policy and concept as well as the particularity of the geographical environment of undeveloped countries, the teaching staff need to objectively have rich teaching experience and high teaching level and subjectively possess practical and industrious working style. We hope the subsequent teaching staff construction may get strong support from the NOCFL, Overseas Chinese Affairs Office and all circles, encourage and recommend proper talents to go to Africa and Chinese International School in Zambia. It is predicted that we will need another 2-3 full-time Chinese teachers (volunteers) and 1 martial art teacher (volunteer) in 3-5 years.
In the second place, it's to speed up launching and enforcing standardized Chinese education. At present, Zambia's Chinese education and teaching still focuses on automated instruction and independent inspection in the aspect of "teaching, learning and examination". It has a certain degree of regionalism, specificity and randomicity from teaching planning, textbook selection and lesson giving to examination. Although this can highlight the advantages of doing the right thing at the right time, based on local conditions and teaching students in accordance with their aptitude in teaching method, it lacks subsequent support force in three aspects in long term: the first one is the high dependency on teachers' personal ability and experience; secondly, with "teaching, learning and examination" running through the language culture learning process, most of the teaching points have no uniform quality requirement and standard tested by long-term practice; thirdly, learning system cannot be migrated and adapt to the requirement of continuing systematic learning due to the frequent flow of students. Therefore, we hope it can join in the standard Chinese education system covering the world and having uniform "teaching, learning and examination" mentoring function.
In the third place, it's the problem of network information technology. Currently, the information equipment of the school needs to upgrade completely and the information resource needs to construct reciprocal and shared channel. As the network Chinese education is popularized energetically, network independent education has begun to replace the traditional concentrated face to face teaching education in developed countries. Network has incomparable advantages such as convenience, rapidness and low cost. While in African countries, like Zambia, since social economic basis does not synchronize with network information technology, the society and the public are limited by the deficiency of economic conditions and equipment in using the internet. In default of comprehensive network education basis and popular network terminal device, the concentrated network education is dominant. By utilizing the network platform of the teaching school, students may share teaching resource across the world, improve learning efficiency and join in network examination. Based on this, complete and upgraded information devices are particularly significant to the strategic development of the school. In consideration of the practical demand, we hope to complete the primary construction of network device by social donation, and to build a long-term channel for information and resource sharing with each teaching school. It is expected that the school needs 30-50 sets of computer and corresponding network facilities in 1-2 years.
Lastly, it's the communication, exchange mechanism of Chinese education work and resource allocation optimization under the standard system. With a view to the common problems and confusions in education and teaching practice and the limitation of resource and assets allocation efficiency, we hope each teaching school can establish a long lasting communication mechanism under the support and organizational management of Overseas Chinese Affairs Office and NOCFL. This kind of communication mechanism not only covers regular exchange on the general trend and huge change of the Chinese education teaching, daily educational theory (method) communication, but also includes the allocation of public resources under uniform dispatch and coordination, such as books, video, cultural transmission materials, hardware assets and material donation. This communication mechanism is able to utilize and extract the essence of the teaching schools across the world to the hilt, optimize resource allocation and help supply each other's needs and even optimize the allocation of teaching resource so as to make contributions in improving the worldwide Chinese education level.
Hinese education still has a way to go towards the world, and we need to do the work in a down-to-earth way. English will not be in such a high place today without several centuries of development, thus we should not seek quick success and instant benefits and it is impossible to reach the goal in one step. Under the complicated Chinese teaching situation, Chinese International School in Zambia will have the firm belief of educating people in a hundred years and the confidence in overcoming difficulties, abandon all short-term interests, never take "work performance and interests" as the driving force of education work or turn Chinese education and cultural inheritance into "short, nearby and fast" projects to ruin the hard-won global Chinese learning opportunity created by the nation after prosperity and several generations of ethnic Chinese's painstaking efforts.We have decided to take root in Africa, and in Zambia to lead an all-around development path with African characteristics in a well-grounded way.
