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This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.
Many people in Britain say the nation's own education system needs to improve after a BBC documentary about Chinese teaching methods sparked fierce debate.
The documentary, entitled "Are Our Kids Tough Enough? Chinese School", was broadcast recently in Britain and focused on Bohunt School in Hampshire, to the southwest of London. Five Chinese teachers were recruited to the school to teach 50 students for a month using teaching methods used in China.
The documentary attracted an audience of 1.8 million and an 8.6 percent audience rating on the first day it was broadcast, more popular than the "No 2" show the previous week.
The documentary also sparked heated debate online and became a hot topic on Twitter, with many education specialists participating in the discussion.
Many British Twitter users complained not about the Chinese teachers, but about their own country's education system.
One Twitter user nameduser@dkenstonesaid that British education has gone soft, the teachers are abused and students have no discipline.
On the BBC website, a debate entitled "What can British schools learn from the Chinese education system?" became especially popular.
Kathryn James, deputy general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers in Britain, defended the British school system and said it had advantages over China's.
She said students' autonomy, questioning and the development of skills to allow them to think for themselves are key elements in the British approach, and do not appear to be part of the Chinese method; and as teachers involved in the program take lessons from the experiment, no doubt the Chinese teachers featured will also learn from the UK's approach to teaching.
