At the end of December, I visited two Aflatoun projects in the Chinese Guangnan County, where we work together with PLAN China and Be Better China to provide children with Financial Education and Life Skills (FELS). Together, these two organisations reach all grade 1 students at the 27 middle schools in Guangnan County, that is 11,706 students in the second semester of 2016. Most of those middle schools are attended by pupils who live far away and are coming from poor families where both parents have migrated to big cities for work. That’s why these schools provide free boarding and meals three times a day for all students who live more than five kilometres away from the school.
Together with Bingmei Li, PLAN China Project manager, I visited Zhetu middle school, located two hours by car from Guangnan County. At this school I met Ms. Lili, the teacher who is responsible for teaching FELS to all classes of grade 1 (there are 10 classes and one class consists of 58 students). FELS is delivered each week for a 40 minutes session for the full two semesters (one year). Ms. Lili is a very dedicated and motivated teacher and has discovered the difference between the traditional teaching method and the active learning method. After she received several active learning methods from a Be Better master trainer and applied it in class, she found that students became more active and more confident. Many pupils cannot wait to have the FELS class with Ms. Lili because she always uses creative methods such as a game, a song and drama. FELS class has quickly become a favourite subject for all grade 1 students and Ms. Lili has become the most popular teacher for them all.
