The years three and four pupils at St Paul's Primary School in South Manchester will be the first children ....

Primary is first to put Chinese on curriculum

A primary school in Manchester has become one of the first in the UK to teach Chinese as part of its curriculum with help from teachers supplied by the Confucius Institute at The University of Manchester.
The years three and four pupils at St Paul's Primary School in South Manchester will be the first children in the north west to learn Mandarin during school time - even though only one of the pupils is of Chinese descent.

The Children - from Withington - will be celebrating Chinese New Year with a special performance at the school assembly this Friday (8 Feb) partly delivered in Chinese.

They have been in e-mail contact with youngsters at a primary school in Beijing to help them perfect their language skills and hope to gain an internationally recognised language qualification next year.

And in recognition of their success, the Office of Chinese Language Council International has just awarded the school the status of 'Confucius Classroom', which will enable it to act as resource for other schools in the area - with the help of University of Manchester staff.