LEEDS COMMUNITY MANDARIN CHINESE SCHOOL

	Every Saturday afternoon, some sixty young people from across the Leeds area attend lessons in Mandarin Chinese held at Little London Primary School. Funded by Prince Henry’s and run in partnership with the local Chinese community, the Leeds Community Mandarin Chinese School is one of the flagship initiatives of our Language College community programme.
The school was established in September 2000 to make provision for young people from the Mandarin Chinese community to learn to read and write the language which many of them speak in the home. Such has been the success of this venture that it has expanded to provide six separate teaching groups, and over a dozen students have now achieved top grades at GCSE in Mandarin Chinese, sitting their examinations at Prince Henry’s.
This is quite a unique example of a Specialist Language College working in partnership with the community, and it has received acclaim at a local, national and international level, including press coverage in the Times Educational Supplement and a Chinese newspaper. The school is also highlighted in the Specialist Schools Trust’s publication “Best Practice in Language Colleges”.
	The teaching staff are employed by Prince Henry’s, under the leadership of a “Lead Teacher”. Overall responsibility lies with Chris Lillington, the Language College Director. He works closely with an elected Management Committee, composed of parent volunteers, which shares the strategic leadership of the school. In this way the school is truly based on partnership, and its success lies on the fact that it draws upon both the expertise and cultural insight of the Chinese community, and the experience and structure of a mainstream school.
One of the objectives for the future development of the school is to provide more opportunities for cross-cultural collaboration with those students at Prince Henry’s who are also learning some basic Mandarin Chinese. More details can be found on the website of the Leeds Community Mandarin Chinese School