Memories take Katharine Carruthers back to when she began studying Chinese at Durham University more than 40 years ago, a time when the subject was far less common in the United Kingdom than it is today.
She recalls that in 1985 there were only about 25 students studying Chinese across the entire country.
"It was a bit of a leap in the dark," she said, but clearly remembers how she was more than willing to take that leap and start studying Chinese. After Carruthers moved into teaching, she realized just how rewarding it was to be one of the trailblazers in promoting and developing Chinese language education in England.
Her job titles speak for themselves. Retiring this July, she served as director of the Center for Chinese Language Education at University College London Institute of Education, or UCL IOE, and director of the Mandarin Excellence Program, or MEP, a language program funded by the UK's Department for Education and delivered through state secondary schools in England. Carruthers has also served as the global strategic academic adviser for China for UCL.
Over the years, she has witnessed the flourishing landscape of Mandarin learning in the UK.
A September report by the British Council noted that Mandarin is one of the few languages to have "significantly increased" in provision during the past decade. Entries for the General Certificate of Secondary Education, or GCSE, in Mandarin, rose from a little more than 3,000 in the 2012-13 academic year to more than 7,800 in 2023-24.
Heated discussions have also been taking place in the UK about how to build the country's China capabilities, with the report stressing that the education sector — which produces a pipeline of graduates with Mandarin language skills, knowledge of Chinese culture, politics and history, as well as firsthand experience of the country — must be included in the long-term investment strategy.
Among the many initiatives across the UK, both state-funded and voluntary, that have fueled the takeoff of Mandarin education, the MEP remains one of the most influential.
The program, which was launched in 2016, requires participating students to acclimatize themselves to the intensive nature of the project, with an average of eight hours of work per week which can consist of in-classroom lessons, after-school teaching, self-study and more.
It has far exceeded its initial target of seeing at least 5,000 students in England on track toward fluency in Mandarin by 2020, with the number surpassing 16,000 in 2025, significantly more than the less-than 400 participants in 14 schools taking part when it was set up, according to UCL IOE.
The MEP has continued to grow. After the first phase from 2016 to 2021, funded through the initial investment, the program received an additional minimum of four years of funding that has since been extended through August 2026.
In 2023, it was also expanded into the sixth form, the final two years of pre-university study in the English school system. Previously, the MEP had been designed to be completed before students started their sixth-form studies, but it was observed that larger numbers of MEP students would willingly continue their learning journey into the sixth form and beyond, if given the chance.
"The MEP has been a huge success," said Carruthers. "It has been proven nationally that if you give British children enough learning hours in a week, they too can become very accomplished language learners."
According to an independent evaluation report on the MEP's first five years, the 2021 GCSE exams saw the first cohort of MEP graduates achieve notable results in Mandarin Chinese, approaching the attainment levels of students in fee-paying independent schools, who are generally considered to devote more time and resources to language learning.
Prior to the MEP, Mandarin Chinese had been taught in only a small number of state schools in England.
The disparity in Mandarin provision between independent and state schools, even in comparison to other languages, is "particularly dramatic", the British Council report said.
Only approximately 7 percent of all school children in England are educated in independent schools, according to the Independent Schools Council, but data published by the Department for Education shows that in 2019, 33 percent of all entries for GCSE Chinese exams were from students in independent schools.
