Governor's OBE delight
9th January 2018
Melbourn Village College governor Katharine Carruthers has spoken of her delight at receiving an OBE in the New Year’s Honours for her services to education.
“I am thrilled with the award,” she said “It is an official recognition of the work to develop Chinese teaching in schools in which I and my team have been involved over a number of years.
“I have had messages of congratulations and support from all over the world, which has brightened up the beginning of January considerably.2
Mrs Carruthers is the Director of University College London’s Confucius Institute of Education and a driving force behind the teaching of Chinese in schools in England. This includes Melbourn, which became the first school in Cambridgeshire to include Mandarin as part of the curriculum two years ago. The school has since been invited to join the national Mandarin Excellence Programme and she is very pleased with the on-going work.
“As a governor at MVC, I have been delighted to be able to help the school with the introduction of Mandarin. I am proud that the school's first teacher of Chinese, Frank Fan, was one of my PGCE Mandarin students at the UCL Institute of Education, before taking up his role at MVC.
“Over the past 18 months, I have come in to see Mr Fan teach at MVC every term and have been very impressed by the progress and motivation of the students and the high expectations of the teacher.
“It is encouraging to see the school joining the Mandarin Excellence Programme with the first cohort of Year 7 students receiving four taught hours of Chinese per week and four hours of self-study.
“The introduction of Chinese in the school would not have been possible without the strong support of the Head, the Languages Department, the Chair of Governors and Professor van de Ven and other governors.
Mrs Carruthers, who previously taught Chinese in the Cambridge area and has written books on the subject, said there is an increasing need for English people to be able to speak the language as China’s world influence grows.
“When I first embarked on learning Chinese myself at the age of 18 (it wasn't possible to learn in school in those days), I had no background in the Far East and no idea where the study of this language might take me.
“Interaction with China and Chinese people has been a constant source of interest and stimulation throughout my career; learning Chinese was the starting point of a lifelong adventure!
“It's important that we're able to speak Chinese, as well as Chinese people speaking English. It's not yet taught in every school, so we still have a long way to go.”
Melbourn chair of governors Sue Williamson said: “This is a very well deserved honour – I cannot think of anyone who has done more to promote the teaching of Mandarin in schools and trained high-quality teachers.”
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