In my 25 years of working in education around the world I have had to answer many questions. About 3 months ago I was asked how Shi Da International Department manages to take low scoring ‘zhongkao’ students, incorporate them into an international educational program and produce A and A* IGCSE and A level results? How do we get a student with a 500 ‘zhongkao’ score into the top tier universities in the world?

Is it because we have very experienced Chinese and International teachers?

An excellent academic support program for weaker students and very strong students?

We push the students hard to achieve their dreams?

We treat our students with respect, fairness and love?

Or is it because we believe it is never too late?为时不晚

Well yes this all helps, but it is because we know students. We understand the individual challenges they have, the pressure they sometimes feel and their individual needs. So how do we achieve this?

At the same time we push our students, we support them. Every lesson has clear objectives and learning outcomes. Students are able to self assess if they achieved the objective of the lesson and if not, sign up for an extra class on that topic given in the lesson. All our tests use a very high level of analytical data to analyze the weak areas of a student and pinpoint their errors in order to provide extra personalized and tailor-made work.

When you have such a good academic system and program it does not matter the level of student we get. If our students really want to achieve their dreams, we will support them 100% to do so.