Dear Funding officer,

I am interested in applying for the Friends funding to support the Mandarin Excellence Programme (MEP) initiative that I was approached to. The fund is to spend on staff costs, student ambassadors’ costs, refreshments, and teaching materials. The following message will help you understand the MEP more. Please noted that two of the four local schools mentioned are on our Outreach priority list.

Many thanks for your consideration.

Kind regards,

Cong Xia

Dear Congxia   In phase 2 of the Department for Education’s  Mandarin Excellence Programme (MEP), I am hoping that you or your colleagues would be interested in some partnership work with local MEP schools teaching Mandarin in your area?   Across England there are now 75 schools taking part in the MEP and about 7,000 students, with the numbers growing each year. The MEP is delivered by the UCL Institute of Education. As you may know, students study Mandarin for 8 hours a week (4 taught hours and 4 hours of self-study). If you are interested, you can see examples of the students’ extra-curricular Chinese-language work here and here .   Students on this programme are increasingly in need of Chinese-related enrichment opportunities for their students, outside the usual curriculum. Students would also benefit from more exposure to university-level ideas and university experiences to smooth the path to university-level Chinese studies for this unprecedented cohort of linguists. The Department for Education is also very keen for this to happen, where possible. We are therefore helping all MEP schools to reach out to universities with Chinese courses, to explore the possibility of arranging outreach events, for example:  

• guest lectures/visits to school
• visits to schools by your students as ambassadors for their courses
• intensive study activity days (with taster sessions of courses you offer)
• visits to your Chinese department
• taster seminars
• Chinese film afternoons with follow-up discussions
• Mandarin competitions on campus
• language practice with native Chinese undergraduates

  These are just a few ideas – schools would be grateful for collaboration on any other type of activity that you think could help to promote your department’s work while positively impacting the school students’ motivation and Mandarin learning experience.   We thought that you might be particularly interested in working with Highdown School, Reading School, The Willink School and the Piggott School, as they are not far from your campus and their keen Mandarin students ought to consider the University of Reading as an option in future.   Is this something you would consider as part of your outreach and widening participation activities? If so, please let us know and the contact person and we will be happy to facilitate initial conversations with the schools. We can also provide you with relevant resources or further activity suggestions if that would help – again please just let us know.