News

Research centre’s expertise in demand with Chinese government delegation

(23 January 2004)

A high-level delegation from China has visited the University of Durham’s Curriculum Evaluation Management Centre (CEM Centre) to establish means of assessing and evaluating a planned widespread reform in China’s schools.

The delegation, which included a mix of central government officials and academics, was led by the Deputy Director General of the Basic Education Department from China’s Ministry of Education. The delegation also visited a number of schools in the region, Newcastle Local Education Authority and East Cleveland Education Action Zone.

The CEM Centre provides schools with monitoring information for all ages in the school system and currently analyses data from over 1 million pupils per year.

The University of Durham has long-established links with China through research, exchanges, consultancy and partnerships in a number of academic departments.

A number of Chinese language variants of the Centre’s projects are already run in Hong Kong. It is hoped this visit will lead to the monitoring schemes being used across China.

Projects include those that measure value-added, pupils’ attitudes, safety in schools, relationships, and learning and teaching processes. The analysed data with comparisons greatly assist schools in validated self-evaluation and management.

Professor Peter Tymms, Director of the CEM Centre said: “Since the centre started its first project in 1983, we have become one of the largest providers of performance indicators in the world. We are very keen to extend our relationship with China and know that we can be of huge benefit to the work planned for its educational system.”

23 January 2004

• The CEM Centre has provided value-added information for schools and colleges since 1983.
• University departments and sections with recent or current links with China and Hong Kong include: Archaeology, Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Business School, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics & Finance, Education, Engineering, Geography, Geological Sciences, Language Centre, Physics, Politics, Sociology and Theology.
• There are currently over 200 students from China studying at the University of Durham.

Dionne Hamil, Public Relations Office Tel: 0191 334 6078, Email: dionne.hamil@durham.ac.uk

Mark Wightman, CEM Centre Tel: 0191 334 4189, Email: mark.wightman@cem.dur.ac.uk
Website: www.cemcentre.org