Fortune Hongqiao is a bilingual kindergarten in Shanghai.  It received its 4Cs School award in May 2018

Fortune Hongqiao Kindergarten is a Chinese-English private bilingual school with a widely multicultural, linguistically diverse community, focusing on the children’s personal as well as academic development, preparing them to become adaptable, confident, moral, caring and cooperative global citizen.

Children: Our previous experiences with P4C at Fortune Hongqiao as well as our observations of activities from our sister Fortune Kindergartens now practising P4C have already demonstrated the role P4C plays in developing the children’s thinking skills and self-expression, their language skills and overall preparation for learning and success in the future.

As a group of schools, Fortune Kindergartens have made a commitment to implement and develop P4C practice.  P4C is a strategy that aligns very well with our values-based curriculum framework, giving us opportunities to engage with the children in meaningful search and understanding of our school’s core values:  Care, Courage, Open Mindedness, Confidence, Creativity, Cooperation, Responsibility, Independence, Respect, Critical Thinking, and Appreciation.

The school's 4Cs award evaluation stated that:

Fortune Hongqiao Kindergarten (FHK) started P4C in 2012/3, and gave its first in-school P4C Foundation training to K1 and K2 staff in 2014.  Since then FHK has provided further Foundation training to ensure that its new staff are familiar with the approach.  The school has established a core P4C team and appointed a P4C leader to champion the development of P4C program.  Plans are in place to continue the development of P4C through 2018/19.

Strategically, the school has adopted P4C to develop the children’s thinking skills and self-expression, their language skills and their preparation for learning and success in the future.  P4C aligns well with FHK’s values-based curriculum, helping the children to explore and understand the school’s core values.  P4C is regularly timetabled in K1 and K2 and has recently started in Pre-K.  It is conducted in Chinese and English languages.     

The level of commitment to P4C is strong.  As well as the continuing investment in P4C training and the regular timetabling of P4C, there are monthly P4C review meetings for each age group and an admirable willingness to share practice between teachers.  The school participates in the Fortune Kindergarten’ P4C Leadership Group to share practice with other schools.  It also took part in the Xiehe Education Group Research Center P4C action research project in 2015.

The school has paid unusually strong attention to reviewing the effectiveness of P4C at multiple levels and in using the results of these reviews to inform further practice improvements.