Thank you for your continued interest in Wellington College Bilingual Shanghai. Our new school has enjoyed great
support from Shanghai’s municipal government, the Pudong district government and education bureau. Later this month,
we are expecting to meet the thousands of parents who have registered for our open day sessions. As we are aware that
many parents are eager to know more about the new school, we are delighted to share the latest developments in this
series of updates.
New campus
The new campus, built by the Lujiazui group, is located alongside the Chuanyang river in the north of New Bund area in
Pudong, close to its sister school, Wellington College International Shanghai. The campus had its roof capped and façade
completed in last September and December respectively. The interior is scheduled to be completed by end of April and all
furniture should be in place in May. This timeline gives us plenty of time to ventilate and clean the space before
opening day. To this end, the new campus has installed a VRV air conditioning system and a central fresh air system,
which can reduce indoor PM 2.5 by 85%. Before any staff members enter the campus, an air quality test will be carried
out by a reliable engineering institution chosen by the Lujiazui group and the school itself, to ensure it’s a safe
place for working and learning.
Recruiting
We have been recruiting an outstanding team of teachers. Our recruitment campaign began last September and
has scheduled job fairs outside of China and hundreds of interviews with Shanghai-based teachers. In October, we
experienced a lot of attention from teachers in Hong Kong at an international recruitment fair. In January, we
interviewed teachers at Wellington College in England and at three international fairs in London.
The expat teachers we are looking for must not only have outstanding teaching qualifications and experience, they must
also embrace Chinese culture and the Wellington ethos, and more importantly have a passion for bilingual education. When
recruiting Chinese teachers, the process usually goes through three to five rounds of careful selection, starting from
reviewing resumes to sending an offer. Besides our requisite requirements, we ensure that every Wellington teacher shows
open-mindedness and critical thinking, as these are essential when teaching a curriculum that combines the strength of
Eastern and Western education ideals. With these two qualities, they are able to embrace new ideas while thinking
critically about them. Currently, we have successfully recruited 90% of the necessary teaching staff, who have an
average of 10 years’ teaching experience. 80% of our expat teachers are from the United Kingdom and most of them will
receive a full induction in July at Wellington College in England. Various opportunities for teaching training have been
provided for new staff since last December.
Curriculum and teaching resources
The Wellington College Bilingual Shanghai primary and secondary curriculum has been carefully crafted by
educational specialists within Wellington, supported by a wide range of Chinese and international experts. The process
has taken over two years. In the beginning, our team did a comprehensive comparison between the Chinese and English
curricula in terms of each subject to get a clear idea of what we want for our own curriculum. This idea enables us to
set short-term and medium-term plans for each subject as well as the teaching goals for each year group. Then following
several rounds of discussions and revisions, we specially designed a system to evaluate the outcome of our education
provision. The curriculum gained important insights from practical perspectives when the core teaching team of
Wellington College Bilingual Shanghai and Hangzhou joined in the curriculum design process, ensuring our curriculum is
as effective as possible.
Due to our successful recruiting process, lead teachers of each subject have been in post and have begun to
study the Wellington bilingual curriculum with the support from the core leadership team. They are also greatly involved
in the procurement of all teaching materials, which will be delivered during May, June and July. New books for Primary
and Junior High libraries will arrive in early June, giving our librarians three months to sort them and get the
fantastic reading space ready for Wellington pupils.
Open Day
Wellington College Bilingual Shanghai will hold its first open day sessions on April 14th, held on the
Wellington College International Shanghai campus. During these sessions, the leadership team will share with you all the
information you want to know about our education ethos, curriculum, teaching team, campus and admissions process. All
parents of children from Grade 1 to 6 are warmly welcome to attend these sessions. If you share our ethos and visions,
please do not hesitate to register for attendance.
