London to finally get a Mandarin immersion school
Is 2014 a group of parents attempted to create the United Kingdom’s first Mandarin immersion program. To be called the Marco Polo school, it was to launch in 2014 as a “free school,” the English equivalent of a charter school in the United States. The authority that oversees such schools eventually decided it wasn’t inclusive enough, scrapping the project to the distress of parents.
Now a private school has taken on the same project and is set to open in the fall of 2017 in the the west London district of Kensington.
Called Kensington Wade, the school will offer a 50/50 model from preschool through middle school, or age 13. It will cost about $12,500 per year.
[note that the Independent’s headline is a little misleading. There is already a Mandarin immersion school in Europe, but it’s in Hungary so the Magyar-Kínai Két Tanítási Nyelvu ́ ́ Általános Iskola is a bilingual Chinese-Hungarian school, not a bilingual Chinese-English school.]
Europe’s first ever bilingual Chinese-English school to open in London
Founders of new Kensington Wade prep school and nursery say learning Chinese ‘prepares children for the new century’
The Independent Online
Mandarin Immersion Parents Council 