China's Education system

Slides on China's education system 
By: CID Group 1

Report on The differences between the structure of Singapore andChina’s educational system.

Education system

The differences between the structure of Singapore and China’s educational system

China's education comprises of a compulsory nine-year education system. All students must fulfill an education level of from Primary 1 to Junior High 3. This will ensure that all Chinese have the basic education. In Singapore, all Singaporeans must receive at least 10/11 years of basic education, ranging from Primary 1 to Secondary 4/5. After these, most of the Singaporeans will proceed onto Junior College, Polytechnic or ITE. Other than the difference in the number of years in compulsory education system, China has a six-year primary school, three-year middle school and three-year high school education system. While in Singapore, there is a six-year primary school, four/five-year secondary school and two/three-year pre-university education system. Under comparison, China's education is a little bit fast-paced while Singapore's education provides more alternatives and ensure every Singaporean completes at least the secondary level of education. Nevertheless, both countries' ultimate goal is to ensure all citizens are educated.

China's main language is Chinese while Singapore's is English. Since the age of 3/4, Singaporean preschoolers will have already known the basic English words. One of Singapore's education policy is bilingualism. Hence, not only do the preschoolers in Singapore receive English education, their Mother Tongues are not forgotten too. To strive hard to achieve bilingualism, Singapore focuses on stressing students to be able to learn English well, but at the same time, being able to converse fluently in their Mother Tongues. Our own school, River Valley High School is an example in how Singapore's education policy works. Thus, there are also school titles such as SAP school, and RV is one of them. Whereas in China, the students only begin their English Language lesson when they are 10. The difference in the age of learning English results in the bilingualism skill.

Other than bilingualism, Singapore has another education policy, which is the financial assistance plan.Singapore strives to allow every student a chance to receive tertiary education. Singapore citizens can receive an account, Edusave, to aid in their learning. Annually MOE will add in $300 into their account for learning, workshops etc. However in China the tax funded higher education was abolished. This results in Chinese students having to compete to earn a place in the higher education in China.

China                              Singapore

Education System:  • 6 years primary school • 3 years middle high school • 3 years high school • University/higher education	Education System: • 6 years primary school • 4/5 years secondary school • 2/3 years pre-university education • University/higher education
Main Language: Chinese Chinese only get to learn English in school when they are 10.	Main Language: English      Singaporean get to learn          English since preschool.

Difference in Education in China and in Singapore

Fast-paced	More alternatives: Polytechnic/ ITE
Education policy: • Modernize education  (Allow females to learn, no more imperial examination)	Education policy: • Meritocracy • Bilingualism • Financial Assistance
Long school hours, less co-corricularactivities	Short school hours, more co-corricular activities

Information on the partner school-Mission ,Vision ,Values and Key programmes

扬大附中东部分校位于江苏省扬州市广陵区新农路顾庄新村东侧。它是扬州大学附属中学教育集团的成员校之一。东校占地200亩，投资1.4亿。东校确立以“为学生终身发展奠定基础，为教师施展才华搭建平台”的办学理念，整合资源，开拓创新，努力办成特色鲜明、质量上乘、现代化水平高的新型学校。学校也重视艺术、体育特长生的培养，与省内外多家著名艺术、体育院校紧密合作，为学生打开进入体艺高校的通道。学校与国外多家高等院校及国家留学基金管理委员会留学预科学院与江苏国际预科学院合作，为学生出国深造留学提供便捷、安全、权威的途径。学校秉承附中优良传统，坚持以人为本，和谐为美，既关注师生的现在，更关注师生的未来；既充分尊重每一个学生的个性发展，又充分发挥每一个教师的积极性和创造性。坚持为家长服务， 让家长放心；为学生服务，让学生成才。东校负责坚持学生的品德高尚，提高学生的成绩，强健学生的体质。关爱每一个学生的成长，实施分层教学与特色教学，倾力打造高品位的校园文化。

东校校风：严、实、活

严：严谨的作风 严格的要求 严密的措施

实：老实的态度 务实的精神 扎实的基础

活：活跃的思想 活泼的气氛 灵活的方法

东校校训：求真、求善、求美、求健

求真：求真理 求真知 求真诚

求善：克己奉公 乐于助人 勇于奉献

求美：美的语言 美的举止 美的心灵

求健：健康的身体 健康的心理 健康的情趣！

Done By: Jeremy Koh(23) , Chai Lixian (3) , Sheryl Mah (13), Jeanette Tang (18), Zhang Yue (21), Zarek Tan (33)

China's dilemma between pursuing higher economic growth and escalating pollution due to the industrialisation ~Jeanette~

By pursing higher economic growth, china would have to sacrifice a lot. The pollution will keep on escalating due to industrialisation. 

With the rapid growth of economic, china would be more industrialised and build more factories, which would contribute to the already high carbon emissions rates in China. This way, for china to decrease its carbon emission rates in the future would be a difficult and tedious task. 

By pursing a higher economic growth, the income gap between the social classes will widen. The rich will be richer, the poor will be poorer, and not everyone has equal opportunities from the growth. If this goes on, in the future, when there are more poor than rich, and they can no longer stand the suffering brought by the income disparity, china might have a revolution, causing its economy to drop, and the whole cycle to repeat itself again. 

However, there are also benefits from China's pursuit in economic growth. The standard of living will improve and employment rates will increase. People will be consuming more high end goods and services, which is an indication of their loves improving. Also, with industrialisation, there will be more job opportunities available, increasing the employment rates and jobs availability, which is very important for china as china has a huge and growing populations. With more jobs, more people have a stable income to live on, and the people are happy. Also, it will improve the country's economy. 

In conclusion, China's pursuit in higher economy growth will bring upon drastic effects, like a huge environment impact. I feel that it is not worth it to invest too much in industrialisation and eventually cause the terrible environment impacts, which can already be seen in some places in china, like Beijing. China should focus on curing the pollution problems, and find another way perhaps to boost its economy instead of relying too much on industrialisation.

By: Jeanette Tang(18)

China's family structure and its effect on the Chinese society ~Jeanette~

The core value in the Chinese family, filial piety requires that children or grandchildren respect and care for their parents or grandparents. In this family system, sons are permanent members of their natal family and retain life-time financial relationships with their parents. They are expected to contribute to their parents’ economic well-being even after they are married themselves. Thus, it is in their self-interest for parents to invest in sons because they may reap long-term returns from this investment. In contrast, daughters are only temporary members of their natal families before marriage, upon which a woman serves her husband’s extended family. Thus, due to the limited time during which daughters serve their natal families, parents often extract resources from unmarried daughters, for example in terms of remittances from daughters’ market labor or housework, to improve the family budget and invest in sons. 

It as long been known that in China, parents favour boys over girls. After the one child policy was introduced to curb the rapidly growing population in China, parents have started to try harder for a boy. In fact, when a girl has been given birth to, the mother is usually painfully, innocently discriminated. Crueller, when the parents realise that their future child is a girl, many opt for immediate abortion, even though it's illegal. Due to these actions, the birth rates of boys and girls per year are very uneven. In fact, china had to import brides for, overseas to marry the sons as there are too many boys and hardly a single girl for each boy to marry. 

This shows that in the traditional family structure, girls are sadly much less favoured compared to the boys, and are thus not treated as equally and fairly. Now, girls are not as discriminated as before, as parents start to realise their selfish actions, in fact, some children also take in their mother's surname, in some cases if the surname is very rare and unique and the parents want to keep the surname to carry down for the next generations. With these little bits of improvements in the family structure where girls and boys are treated more equally, it is a relief for all potential girl babies and mothers in the future. 

By:Jeanette Tang(18)

Chinese History: Terracotta Warriors ~Jeanette~

The terracotta army was discovered by accident in 1974 at Xi'an, in China, when local farmers digging a well broke into a pit containing 6000 life-size terracotta figures. Excavation in 1976 revealed two further pits both filled with terracotta warriors. On the eastern side of the tomb a number of small pits have been found containing the bones of horses and smaller size terracotta figures of grooms. Since then discoveries have continued to be made at the site and to date the remains of nearly 8000 terracotta figures have been recovered.

There has been worldwide fascination in the discovery of the Terracotta Army and it is now regarded as the 8th Wonder of the Ancient World.

Emperor Qin wanted to live forever. He spent much of his life and resources searching for immortality and the "elixir of life". He also spent a huge amount of resources building for himself the largest single tomb built to a leader in the history of the world. He felt this huge army would protect him and help him to keep his power in the afterlife. He died and was buried in 210 BC, over 2000 years ago. 

From this, I can see that the Chinese emperors were adventurous, yet still afraid at the same time.  They were adventurous as Emperor Qin thought of this bold idea, was willing to spend a lot of resources and effort to build the majestic tomb. They were afraid, as seen from the reason why Emperor Qin build the tomb, to keep his power in the afterlife. All the emperors were afraid of death, of losing their power, and thus used many methods to retain their power and long assured life. 

Sources 

http://www.terracottawarriors.co.uk/terracotta-warriors.php

http://www.ducksters.com/history/china/terracotta_army.php

http://www.china-mike.com/china-tourist-attractions/xian-terracotta/

www.topchinatravel.com

By: Jeanette Tang(18)

Family structure in China ~Lixian~

Family structure in China

One-child policy was introduced in 1979 to control the rapid population growth. This policy only allows one child in the family. This results in a lot of females being abandoned since young as a female cannot carry on the job of continuing the family line. Hence, babies being swapped at birth and humiliation that was suffered by the mother when a baby girl was born were scenes being seen during that period of time. Many babies are aborted and hence, this policy is very controversial. Females are highly discriminated, causing gender segregation within Chinese society. However, now the government is starting to relax this policy by allowing more parents to have more than 1 child. If the parents are the only child of their own parents, they can have more than 1 child.

China's dilemma between pursuing higher economic growth and escalating pollution due to industrialization ~Lixian~

China opened up since 1978.  Since then, China quickly grow and evolve to how it is today. With such an economic boost come a heavy price: escalating pollution. China's air quality is very concerning and worrying. Out of the Top Ten Worst Air Quality Cities list, China took up 7 spots among the list! This shows that the people living in those 7 cities are going through hazy days everyday. This haze would surely affect their health gradually, and it is even worse for those who have respiratory illnesses.

China had to industrialize in order to catch up with the rest of the world, but at the same time, China could not disregard Chinese' health and China could not disregard how this haze will affect the tourism in China. This is a sure dilemma but I feel that China should slow down their pace of industrialization as China is now the world's leading economic. Moving forward is a must, but at the same time, China should slow down and appreciate how much if Beijing is left before truly losing it. If not, with such an advancement in industrialization, China can choose to invest in researching for ways to reduce pollution. This way, China can continue or even increase the pace of industrialization, so long as the problem of escalating pollution can be solved.

With China opening up comes with more industrialization. This will result in Chinese becoming richer. Hence, more and more Chinese will choose to buy cars, and hence, contributing to the already escalating pollution. Perhaps the government can implement certain rules to how many cars a family can buy. This will reduce the pollution as the cars on the road lessen.

I know it is not easy to do the above alternatives mentioned, but we should at least try as somethings lost are never retrieveable.

China's dilemma between pursuing higher economic growth and escalating pollution due to the industrialisation (Jeremy)

The is a major problem in China. Firstly China is now growing fast especially in economic growth. But due to that it has cause the major problem,a highly escalating pollution. Pollution is one aspect of the broader topic of environmental issues in China. Various forms of pollution have increased as China has industrialized, which has caused widespread environmental and health problems. According to the World Bank in 2007, 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China.That is significant enough to show how much it would effect the Chinese living in such bad environment. Even though it is good that China has earned more money they should also take care of the welfare of the environment. Because if China has a bad environment to live in no matter how cheap the labour cost are people would not want to invest in China, as the living conditions are bad. For example just by the bad air conditions in looking out of the hotel window is frightening as u get to see nothing. So instead China would not prosper as well and have more people falling sick easily. Therefore China has to balance in between prosperity and environment. By pushing more campaigns of keeping the environment clean making sure there are no energy wastage or random dispose of litters. China could grow even better.
~Jeremy koh 2g 23

China's dilemma between pursuing higher economic growth and escalating pollution due to industrialization

Recently, China has been facing many problems due to their hunger for higher economic growth. Because of this, China used most of their resources and while these resources are being taken up, the amount of air pollution also increases. More carbon dioxide is being produced, this the result in high level carbon emissions in China. The number of people suffering from diseases like lung cancer and other respiratory illnesses has increased rapidly. Only a very small percentage of China has an environment that is considered healthy. Recently, Beijing has been facing serious haze pollutions, this is also one of the causes of China's overused resources. Therefore, I can conclude that China's dilemma between pursuing higher economic growth and escalating pollution due to industrialization.

Sheryl Mah 2G (13)

Reflection — China's dilemma between pursuing higher economic growth and escalating pollution due to industrialization

While China pursues higher economic growth, pollution problems are on the rise and these problems have greatly surpassed the normal levels.Pollution is one aspect of the broader topic of environmental issues in China. Various forms of pollution have increased as China has industrialized, which has caused widespread environmental and health problems.As the world's largest source of carbon emissions, China is responsible for a third of the planet's greenhouse gas output and according to the World Bank in 2007, 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China

1. Air pollution 

-caused by factory and vehicle air pollution,large scale use of formaldehyde in construction and furniture also contribute to indoor air pollution

-effects : Zhong Nanshan, the president of the China Medical Association, in 2012 warned that air pollution could become the biggest health threat

•Lung cancer and cardiovascular disease were increasing

•Many Chinese cities, including Shanghai, currently experience annual average levels of respirable particles that exceed the World Health Organization’s air quality guideline.

•Only 1% of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union, because all of its major cities are constantly covered in a "toxic gray shroud". Before and during the 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing was "frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics."

•The Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning in 2003 had an internal and unpublished report which estimated that 300,000 people die each year from ambient air pollution, mostly of heart disease and lung cancer.Chinese environmental experts in 2005 issued another report, estimating that annual premature deaths attributable to outdoor air pollution were likely to reach 380,000 in 2010 and 550,000 in 2020.

•A 2007 World Bank report conducted with China's national environmental agency found that "...outdoor air pollution was already causing 350,000 to 400,000 premature deaths a year. Indoor pollution contributed to the deaths of an additional 300,000 people, while 60,000 died from diarrhea, bladder and stomach cancer and other diseases that can be caused by water-borne pollution." World Bank officials said "China’s environmental agency insisted that the health statistics be removed from the published version of the report, citing the possible impact on 'social stability'".

-problems regarding air pollution : some cities don’t want their industrial growth hindered, they refuse to accept compulsory carbon dioxide emission limits

2.water pollution 

-cause: increasing population and rapid economic growth as well as lax environmental oversight 

-effect :severe water quantity shortages and severe water quality pollution

•500 million people in China are without safe and clean drinking water.

3. Lead

-cause: Pollution from metal smelters and a fast growing battery industry has been responsible for most cases of particularly high levels. 

-effects : Lead poisoning was in a 2001 paper described as one of the most common pediatric health problems in China. A 2006 review of existing data suggested that one-third of Chinese children suffer from elevated blood lead levels

-problems regarding lead pollution: In 2011, there were riots in the Zhejiang Haijiu Battery Factory from angry parents whose children received permanent neurological damage from lead poisoning. 

Reflection:

  Although China's economy has been growing rapidly, environmental stress is also added on to the citizens as their lives are threatened by pollution in various forms.
Firstly, from the first point, we can see that China's air pollution has became one of the most serious in the world as 80% of the cities that emit the most carbon dioxide is in China, these high rate of carbon dioxide emission has led to fatal health problems like lung cancer and this has resulted in the main cause for Chinese citizen's death to be cancer. It is very worrying to see the trend of the health problems spreading in China and even when this happens, China is unable to efficiently reduce carbon dioxide and this leads to the question if it is more important for China to develop it's economy or to look deeper into the public's heath problem. I feel that the latter one might be more important and China should either try to slow down their rate of economy development or to decrease the pollution efficiently while they develop their economy so as not to worsen the pollution problems 
Next, regrading the problem of water pollution, it is clear that this has affected many people in China and I believe that the quality and quantity of water is very important to a country, including it's economic development. in the long run, if China is unable to improve their water pollution problems, it would affect the whole country when they are unable to get enough clean water and water supply for people.
Last but not least, the lead pollution as stated in the third point reflects just some of the problems directly or indirectly caused by China's high economy growth—the developing battery industries, building of factories etc. These has led to not only health problems, but harm has also been brought to the future generation of China, what would China's economy be like when their future generations are no longer healthy? I think that the benefits of China's high economic growth should be built on the condition that it's future generations are capable of at least maintaining it—which is where the health concerns comes in.
In conclusion,China's economic growth is not supported by the environment and there are already many serious problems created by this speed and rate of industrialization. Thus I feel that while China develops it's economy, the government should have in mind the welfare of the public and weigh the pros and cons of economic development versus the health concern of public. It is important to strike a balance between these two as both are closely related and while the health of the Chinese citizens becomes further threatened, I doubt if pursuing the economic growth of China would be supported by people since it brought more suffering than convenience to their life.

Sources : http://kevindustrialization.blogspot.sg

http://www.cfr.org/china/chinas-environmental-crisis/p12608
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_in_China#Lead

Zhang Yue (21)