Chinese Fellowship Chinese School Profile
Chinese Fellowship of Victoria was established in 1971. It is a non-profit organization; its purpose is to act as a liaison among all Chinese in Melbourne, to promote Chinese friendship and social development, in Chinese social welfare and Chinese-language education; and to make contributions to cultural diversity.
Our school Chairman, Mr Kai-Sing CHUI participated in the activities of various Chinese organizations in different associations including Chinese Fellowship of Victoria which he had held the President for several terms and the Director of Studies in Chinese Fellowship Chinese School.
In recognition of his contributions to the Chinese community, the Victorian Government awarded Mr CHUI the International Volunteer Award, the Melbourne Mayor Community Achievement Award, the Victorian Multicultural Award For Excellence, and the Whitehorse City Council Small and Medium Business Award with a Justice of the Peace title. Under his supervision and management, Chinese Fellowship Chinese School has achieved outstanding results which his dedication and persistence are indeed significantly indispensable.
Chinese Fellowship Chinese school was founded in the same year with Ms Xu Zhiqing as its first Principal. School is directed and managed by Chinese Fellowship of Victoria, its purpose is for the Chinese students to benefit from the awareness, understanding and knowledge in their own language and culture. In early nineteen-nineties, school had appointed accomplished Taiwan veteran educator Ms Linda Huang as school Principal. After coming to Australia, while she was being in medical practice full-time, still found time to be with the school. Linda was inspired by the Chinese cultural education, emphasizing in Australia environment, a lively education has to be taken instead of by-memory education.
Linda’s whole-hearted love of education, enthusiastic attitudes towards teaching, best teaching qualities and eagerness to help teachers and students are fundamentals for the future success of Chinese school. School has leased the campus from Templestowe College during nineteen-nineties. In 1991 the school was granted a VCE registration number, the first for a weekend Chinese school in Victoria. The following year Carey Grammar campus was set up.
Currently Chinese school is managed by Chairman, Philip CHUI, the school again under Philip reached a new era of accomplishment and excellence. School teacher team is an experienced group of elite qualified teachers. Most teachers hold a bilingual teacher qualification in Australia and China, and continue to make academic achievements for students with good results.
Also VCE teacher Yali SHAO has more than 20 years of experience as a Chinese language teacher with a Doctorate Degree. She has been a qualified VCE Chinese language teacher and VCAA assessor since 1995 before she replaced Linda as the school Principal in 2004. Over the years, her students benefited not only from her academic teaching experience, but also for her familiarity with VCE (Chinese) curriculum. Principal Shao always offers a very positive support for each of her students’ studies. She designs many different Chinese study learning areas and develops a comprehensive curriculum through regular reviews and updates. She ensures that each of her VCE students can achieve their own best learning ability coping in the VCE examination. She brings her valuable teaching experience and has a unique contribution to the quality of Chinese language teaching.
Victoria’s Multicultural Awards for Excellence honour outstanding individuals and organisations that foster cross-cultural understanding, support migrants and refugees, and celebrate and preserve the diversity of cultures that make Victoria such a great place to live.
“Chinese school”, “Huang Lei” Principal, and “Cheng Jing” VCE teacher were awarded the 2013 Victorian Multicultural “Language Education” Excellence Award in Organization and Individual categories. Shao Yali was awarded the 2015 Victorian Multicultural “Language Education” Excellence Award (Individual).
The vigorous development of Chinese language education is inseparable from the active participation and strong support of people with insight interests at home and abroad. It is also integral from the hard work of overseas Chinese teachers doing the teaching of the Chinese language. In recent years, many enthusiastic Chinese educators and teachers have actively participated in the standardization, regularization and professionalization of Chinese language education, and contributed to the promotion of Chinese schools’ new establishments, to maintain Chinese traditional culture and enhance Chinese and overseas cultural exchanges. In recognition of the outstanding contributions of enthusiastic overseas Chinese teachers who inspire more people joining the new era of overseas Chinese language education, and further strengthen the synergy of promoting the “three-oriented” standard of Chinese language education, and better meet the ever increasing demand and need for Chinese language and culture; teachers are nominated by overseas Chinese Societies and Chinese schools, and the Chinese Consulate General in Melbourne, Australia.
The Beijing Overseas Chinese Affairs Office and the China Overseas Exchange Association hold annual nominations for “Excellent Overseas Chinese Teachers”. It is hoped that the commended personnel will cherish the honor and make persistent efforts to make new and greater contributions to the future development of overseas Chinese language education. The vast majority of overseas Chinese educators should take the example of commended personnel, develop and innovate, forge ahead, strive for excellence, and jointly create a new era of overseas Chinese language education in the coming years.
On January 5, 2018, our school received the news from China State Council’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Office in regards to the “2017 Excellent Overseas Chinese Teacher Awards List ” ; VCE teacher Jing CHENG was awarded the “Lifetime Achievement Award” ; VCE teacher Yali SHAO was awarded the “Achievement Award” ; Teacher Zou Hailian was awarded the “Excellence Award”.
Our school always encourage teachers to participate in various 20 to 70 hours of professional development and refreshment courses, such as Child Safety, First Aids, Languages Other Than English (LOTE) Methodology, Chinese(1) & (2), Community Language Teaching Certificate IV, etc.
Our school congratulated teacher GAO Yan on completing the Community Language Teaching Certificate IV in 2018, and she was our first teacher to attain the award certificate.
Both “Huang Lei” and “Song Yu-Ping” were given the Best Teacher Achievement Award for 2019 by Community Languages Victoria.
Chinese language teaching in Australia is an integral part of society. Australia is a country mainly of the Western cultural tradition, adopting a multicultural policy, but Chinese culture here, after all, belongs to the minorities. In Australia, teaching Chinese does not have the same locale, even some overseas born Chinese are very unfamiliar to Chinese culture. In Australia, Chinese social context varies widely, from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam. Their home living environment is very different, compared to Australia; thus Chinese proficiency and the understanding of Chinese culture is not alike. For these reasons, Chinese language education has many difficulties.
The fundamental purpose of education is to cultivate the objectivity in people, have both ability and political integrity to widen social services. School, with expanded connotation of education does not only combine the educational mission, but inherits and puts forward the Chinese culture firmly in their country, Australia. In over 30 years, school had trained a large number of Chinese students. The school not only improved the standard of Chinese culture, but also helped the senior class students admitted into well-know universities in Melbourne. School had teachers with high qualifications, and excellent academic performance. One of our best VCE student in 1997 had taken out the first place in Chinese Language Governor’s Award. School had been successfully accredited by Department of Education, VCAA and Community Language Australia. “Pragmatic Learning in Quality”, school with a firm solid attitude, rigorous and ambitious style, has become fans of Chinese children in the community.
School aims are to promote Chinese culture, Chinese-language education, the propagation of Australian multiculturalism; and its mission, through standardization, diversification of Chinese language teaching allowing students to master basic language skills, including listening, speaking, reading, writing. Chinese nation has a long history and wonderful cultural traditions; school will inherit, follow and promote the excellent characters of traditional Chinese into the mainstream society in Australia.
School under the leadership and guidance of Chinese Fellowship of Victoria, with all the concerted efforts of parents and teachers, school’s popularity continues to grow. School has two teaching campuses (Templestowe College and Carey Baptist Grammar School), both offer kindergarten, junior, senior, VCE LOTE, VCE Advanced LOTE and adult classes.
School follows the Chinese Language course curriculum developed by the VCAA; has fully met and is compliant to VELS (Victorian Essential Learning Standards) and F-10 Chinese Language Curriculum requirements developing regularly revised teaching programs, textbooks and teaching methods.
School teaching and student learning materials are written specifically for Chinese learners in Chinese language (Mandarin). Experienced teachers have been proactively adding appropriate teaching aids to achieve learning objectives using flexible teaching models, cultivating students’ interests in the teaching process, through the strengthening of Hanyu Pinyin and 750 characters commonly used in teaching, allowing students to master Chinese listening, talking, reading, writing, for a solid foundation to improve students’ ability to apply what they have learned.
School has written codes of conduct for students, duty statements for teachers and the principal, and other rules and regulations. School has strict policy on the implementation of these codes and rules. Teachers have to to participate in educational professional development seminars, school matters discussion and teaching experience exchanges. School principal is also required to lead by example.
In 2017, the school also adopted the Chinese language curriculum revision from Foundation to Year 10; the school implemented the government’s “Child Safety Act” legislation to protect our school children in accordance with the enacted regulations and standards.
School for many years has actively participated in the Australian Government and Chinese organizations initiatives, in various cultural and educational activities for the prosperity of Australia multiculturalism, making a positive contribution, and won recognitions and appreciations from the Government and the Chinese communities.
