Chinese maths masters travel more than 5,000 miles to impart wisdom to Burton teachers

Chinese maths masters are flying 5,000 miles to impart their wisdom to Burton teachers and students.

Two teachers from Shanghai, "Ms Hou" and "Ms Huang", are jetting into Outwoods Primary School, as part of a teacher exchange programme.

The Harehedge Lane school is taking part in the scheme, which is designed to improve maths teaching in UK schools.

The two teachers travelled to Burton on Sunday, January 14, and spent the following day meeting the children and designing lesson plans for them.

These lessons will be delivered to Year Three and Year Five students on Tuesday, January 23.

As well as the pupils, teachers from other schools in the Central Co-operative Learning Trust will attend in the hope of learning something new.

Outwoods recently joined the trust with two other East Staffordshire area schools, William Shrewsbury Primary School, in Burton, and John of Rolleston Primary School.

Susan Brookes, a Year Five teacher at Outwoods, went the other way and visited a school in Shanghai in August.

Outwoods head teacher Joanne Cutbrush said: "One of our teachers went to China to learn about how they teach maths out there.

"It's well known that the standards in China for maths are excellent, and we're trying to learn from that. Susan went out there for two weeks and learnt a lot."

The exchange scheme is run by the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM), which aims to raise maths teaching standards in UK schools.