Schooled for life

A middle school in Hefei, Anhui province, provides the opportunity of an improved education to hundreds of Tibetan children. Zhang Yue reports.

 

For the 10th time, history teacher Wei Shu spent most of the recent Spring Festival holiday with his students in Hefei, Anhui province, rather than with his family. Even though the 42-year-old has never been to Tibet, he has been schooling hundreds of teenagers from the autonomous region for the past decade.

'Chinese New Year is never an easy time for us,' Wei says. 'While most students go home for the holidays, Tibetan students stay at school because their homes are so far away. Us teachers also stay and take care of them, even though my family complains about me not being able to enjoy the annual family reunion.'

 

Wei teaches at Hefei No 35 Middle School, which has been educating Tibetan children since 2001. It's the only middle school in Anhui to do this.

 

His home is only 20 minutes' drive from school, yet he seldom has the opportunity to go home during Chinese New Year.

 

'We are especially careful with students during the festival, as they are young and easily get homesick,' he says.

 

Wei is one of 23 teachers working with 10 classes of 410 Tibetan students, who study and live at the school. They passed exams in Tibet to get into Hefei's junior high, and only those with high test scores can then go to middle schools elsewhere in the country.

 

From Chinadaily