London nursery teaching 3-year-old children Mandarin to give them 'lifelong advantage for global future'

Nursery: Children as young as 3 are being taught the language
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Children who become bilingual in Mandarin and English from nursery school age will have a lifelong advantage over their peers, according to the head of a Europe’s first “completely immersive” Chinese-English primary.

Jo Wallace, former head of Putney High Junior School, said Kensington Wade - launched this September for a roster of international pupils - offers the best way for Londoners to equip their children as businesspeople and “global citizens” of the future.

Ms Wallace insisted the £17,000-a-year school, which teaches half its lessons in Chinese and the other half in English, is “the opposite of a stressed-out environment”.

She told the Standard: “Almost all business opportunities by and large are helped by having Mandarin, and professional parents who work with China - or who understand this is the future - want their children to keep up.

“We want to take all the children from different backgrounds who come here and create 21st-century global citizens… having a bilingual brain has both emotional and intellectual benefits.”

The school has been welcomed by Vice Chancellor of the University of Buckingham Sir Anthony Seldon as “the most exciting” in the country, and advertising tycoon Sir Martin Sorrell last month told parents at an event that tuition fees were worthwhile as he saw “Chinese and [computer] code” as “the only two languages” the next generation would need.

Pupils are taught for half a day in each language and study all subjects in both tongues, with “UK versions” of traditional Chinese teaching methods — such as Shanghai maths, where the class does not move on until every child understands, “so that no child ever has a hole in their learning”.

One parent, Adele Turner, speaks five languages herself. The businesswoman has one son Tristan, three, at Kensington Wade, while son Rory, six, attends nearby Knightsbridge School where he learns Chinese - only once a week.

Ms Turner said: “I was a bit worried about the Chinese teaching methods… but the teachers are so lovely and in three weeks my son is already speaking Mandarin. He sings songs in Mandarin to me when he comes home.” She added that Tristan’s grasp of Mandarin was already catching up with Rory’s.

The school aims to expand into other European cities over the next decade, with a larger London campus involving two classes of 18 children in every year group from ages three to 11.

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