Are Our Kids Tough Enough? Chinese teachers bring their methods to UK school on BBC Two

Do Chinese teaching methods translate to British school kids?
Tough love: Chinese teachers bring their methods to a UK school (Image: BBC)
BBC
Ben Travis4 August 2015

China has one of the most rigorous education systems in the world. The days are long. Expectations are high. Discipline is mandatory.

But how will the hard-line approach to Chinese education fare in the UK? This is the question posed by BBC Two’s three-part documentary series Are Our Kids Tough Enough? Chinese School, which sees five Chinese teachers head to an Ofsted-approved Outstanding secondary school in the UK.

The teenagers at Bohunt School in Hampshire were forced to make several changes to their day. For one thing, the school day in China lasts 12 hours – meaning an early start with energising exercises, and late afternoons with an additional food break.

The most significant difference is the lack of the tiering system used in a lot of UK schools, which groups kids by ability. In China, children with a variety of abilities learn together, creating results through the inevitable competition that generates, in everything from maths and physics, to PE. It's an approach that creates tension and insecurity for many of the British school children.

While the first episode never drills too deeply into the social experiment it poses, it does make for a passably entertaining watch – even if it makes you wish that Channel 4’s Educating documentaries were back on the air instead.

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BBC Two, 9pm

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