Ashton Sixth form College recently welcomed over 50 students from the Jiangsu Province in China.

Organised by the Education Department of Jiangsu Provincial Government, the event was part of the ‘Qianxiao Qiansheng Project’, where over the next 10 years a thousand students will be selected from a thousand schools across the Jiangsu Province in China, to take part in overseas exchange programmes. Participating students will travel to one of three countries for their programme: the UK, Australia and Canada. 59 students had been chosen to attend the programme in the UK this year; the co-organisers of Monday’s event included Suman Education International, Yangzi Evening News and Ashton Sixth Form College.

During the visit the students participated in various activities with local students. After being welcomed by Dr Janet Nevin, Principal of Ashton Sixth Form College before taking lunch with their British buddies. Around 30 students at the college volunteered themselves to look after the visiting students and although the Chinese students come from a very different cultural background, they all enjoyed traditional British foods. During lunch the visiting students also handed over gifts brought from China to their British buddies.

After lunch, the students were given a taste of UK education, the visiting students participated in a variety of lessons, the teaching method in the UK is different and impressed the visiting students. The visiting students also attended enrichment activities after college, including a football match with the Public Service’s team, an Art & Design drawing workshop, a dance workshop and a filming lesson with the Creative Digital Arts department. For many of the students this was a unique experience, students in the Film and Dance workshops were especially excited; ‘I have never ever done filming before, this is very interesting to me, I now understand how films are made. I also made some new friends in the class, I haven’t got any foreign friends so I am very glad that I can have some friends from the UK. I’ll keep in touch with them. This is really a great experience for me’, one visiting student commented.