Mandarin Excellence Program

In 2017 Crossley Heath was accepted onto the prestigious Mandarin Excellence Programme (MEP). This is a government supported programme run in conjunction with the University College London, which aims to deliver a minimum of 5000 non-native speakers of Mandarin on their way to a high level of fluency by 2020. We are one of a small number of schools in the country selected to deliver this exciting programme. Crossley Heath has a tradition of teaching Chinese dating back to 2003 when the school was awarded Language College status under a previous government programme, and due to our proven track record of delivering strong results at GCSE we have been approved to deliver the programme and now have students completing the MEP in Y7 and Y8. There are many benefits to learning Mandarin Chinese. Not only is it the most widely spoken language in the world and an official language of the United Nations, but the importance of Mandarin as a business language has increased massively in recent years, with China’s economy now the second largest in the world. We believe that students with a good knowledge of Mandarin will be able to set themselves apart from their peers and will have significantly improved employment and earning prospects across a range of careers.

In order to deliver the programme in school, there will be a dedicated from group within each year who will specialise in the study of Mandarin as their Modern Foreign Language.  This means that this form will have 4 taught lessons of Chinese a week instead of French and German lessons.  The lessons will be delivered by a fully qualified teacher of Mandarin. All other aspects of the curriculum will remain the same. This form will continue to study Mandarin as their MFL in Y8 with an expectation that they will continue to GCSE in the subject at KS4. We also offer A-Level Chinese after students have completed their GCSE at Y11. For further details please see our sixth form section.

A short video about the MEP is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLiHqHrtfD4