Photo has been used for illustrative purposes.

Mohammed Ibrahim / Iman Suroor

The Ministry of Education has stressed the importance of adding the Chinese language to the curriculum of the targeted schools, which are teaching Chinese in the current academic year and to add Chinese as a third language to the schools that teach French. The mechanisms of adding the Chinese language will be announced later on.

Underlining the necessity to add Chinese language in classrooms, the ministry made a circular to schools to sort students accordingly in a classroom to be called ‘Third Language’, adding that these tasks should be completed by the end of office hours on Wednesday, September 18 at the latest.

The ministry recruited 150 teachers of Chinese language during the new academic year and will implement, control and evaluate the programme over the coming three years to check how effective it is. The programme is aimed at building solid bases for Chinese language vocabulary and communication skills through integrating the language and content with cultural elements.

The ministry said the Emirati School focuses on teaching multiple languages and the Chinese language curriculum was approved this year to target in the first stage the students from grade 7 to grade 12 in 60 schools, provided that the Chinese language levels to be applicable in the UAE curricula should conform to the Chinese Proficiency Test used in China known as ‘Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi’.

The number of schools teaching Chinese rose to 60 nationwide this year, up from 41 schools last year. Chinese is taught this year in 16 kindergartens in addition to Hamdan Bin Zayed School, 11 secondary schools, grade 7 in 28 schools and other grades in 5 schools. The total male and female students of Chinese schools amount in the current academic year to 17,160 with 16 kindergartens in addition to Hamdan Bin Zayed School, 11 secondary schools, 28 seventh grade schools and 5 first grade schools. Last year there were 41 schools, and the number of Chinese school students in the current academic year is 17,160.

Due to the large number of students interested in this type of three-language schools, the Ministry of Education allocated an additional building for the students of Hamdan Bin Zayed School starting from the current academic year. The building is located in Hammooda Bin Ali School in Al Mushrif area in Abu Dhabi.

As many as 935 students including 741 female students and 194 male students enrolled in Hamdan Bin Zayed Chinese School, Fatima Al Bastaki, Chinese teaching project manager, said, noting that the students from grade 5 to grade 12 would shift to their new building during the first week of October.

Hamdan Bin Zayed School attracted this year 180 children in the kindergarten stage, she added.