Top of the class as Putuo schools scoop awards

Putuo District educational departments were provided with a boost when several schools in the community scooped outstanding awards.

Four Putuo middle schools have been listed as “strong schools,” while a high school in the district has become a “characteristic school.”

Shanghai plans to “strengthen” 116 public middle schools through 2021. Under the Strong School Project, established principals and teachers are deployed to train their counterparts at 116 of the district’s schools.

Also under the project, top schools will share educational resources.

Xinglong Middle School, Yichuan Middle School Affiliated School, as well as Wuning and Nujiang middle schools, have been listed among the 116 strong schools. These experiential schools are expected to help enhance the educational standard of Putuo.

Star student

Qiu Yiling, a sixth-grade student with the Xinglong Middle School, has become a star student in not only academic circles but also sports, instrumental playing and reading. His father, Qiu Xiaozhen, chose Xinglong rather than a private school a year ago after it got listed as a strong school, and it proved to be a wise choice.

Under the scheme, strong schools have been cooperating with famous high schools and even universities to enhance their educational abilities.

Xinglong shares resources with Caoyang No. 2 High School, one of the top places of learning in the city, while the Nujiang Middle School has been cooperating with the nearby East China Normal University.

Expert teams, with each school having at least three experts, have also been established to assess the schools’ current education system and craft their own development plans.

City- and district-level outstanding teachers will also be dispatched to these selected strong schools.

Characteristic school

Meanwhile, the No. 2 Secondary School Affiliated to Tongji University in Putuo has been selected as one of the city’s third batch of characteristic high schools.

Two schools in Putuo — Caoyang Middle School and Ganquan Foreign Language Middle School — were granted the titles in the first and school batches.

Caoyang Middle School, the city’s first characteristic high school, is notable for its rich experimental labs and facilities.

The Ganquan Foreign Language Middle School focuses on cross-culture education with five major foreign-language courses and nine secondary foreign-language courses for each of its students.

Citywide, Shanghai has listed 56 high schools with educational characteristics on humanity, science, art, engineering, social science, finance and medicine, by the end of 2018.