Huamei International School: a great story
By Zhan Lisheng (HK Edition)

GUANGZHOU: For Xiong Jia and her colleagues, running a school is not only a good way to do something for the country, but it also offers a chance to develop their career.

Xiong and most of her management team members, who were educated abroad, have chosen to run a school to make best use of what they had learned about education abroad and what they have understood about China's education.

Set up in 1993, Guangzhou Huamei International School is now one of the most successful private boarding schools in the country.

This was the only school financed and run by the scholars who received schoolings abroad.

"The education philosophy in China is much different from that of the western countries and both philosophies have their merits and demerits," said Xiong, vice-president of the board and school headmaster.

"We are trying to take good advantage of the merits of both while avoiding the demerits in our daily teaching work."

While attaching great importance to cultivating students' innovativeness, independent thinking, international vision and good personality, she said, Huamei spared no efforts to make the students well-versed in basic knowledge of different subjects, which is a common practice in most Chinese schools.

The school allows students to have more time for sports, music and fine arts compared to many other schools.

According to Liu Sha, a board director and vice-headmaster of the school, Huamei has become a cradle for the new generation of overseas Chinese students, a school that receives children of many overseas Chinese, and a school that recruits a large number of teachers educated abroad.

He said that over 1200 graduates went abroad for further education. The children of overseas Chinese and foreign students made up for over 10 percent of its 2600 students in the past couple of years.

Besides running the kindergarten, primary school and secondary school efficiently, Huamei has forged close ties with several key universities in Canada, the UK and Australia to offer preparatory courses, he said, adding the school has also made much headway in running an international class program for foreign students.

(HK Edition 06/01/2007 page6)