English
Supporting teachers’ growth in China and beyond
Project funding
Supported by the Yidan Prize project funds
Education theme
Equity, access, and diversity
Learning/teaching methods and environments
Contents
Overview
Background
About the idea
Impact and results
More to explore
The New Teacher Foundation programs at Soochow University improve the quality of education, especially in rural and remote schools in China.
Supporting teachers is a powerful way to change students’ lives. Building on the New Education Initiative (NEI), the New Teacher Foundation at Soochow University in China brings together programs that address key challenges in education.
Laureate(s)
Background
Professor Zhu launched NEI to address key challenges in education
Founded NEI in 2000, Professor Zhu particularly wanted to address three challenges he saw in China’s exam-oriented education system. He observed teachers shortages, burnout, and a lack of professional development opportunities. The focus on exams meant that students didn’t have an interest-based reading culture. And learning at home was lacking from the equation.
NEI has now grown from a single school to an active network involving nearly 9,000 schools and over 500,000 teachers reaching more than 8 million children in China — over half of which are in rural, hard-to-reach areas.
NEI’s work places great teachers at the heart of a great education
Students’ wellbeing is as important as academic achievement in the classroom. That also means linking wellbeing at school with a positive learning environment at home, putting interests before exams, and nurturing a love of reading as the key to child development. NEI programs take a holistic view of education — which for students means a measurable impact on motivation, learning outcomes, and a sense of belonging at school.
For teachers, there’s a strong focus on creating connections through NEI’s Teacher Growth Model. They’re encouraged to read, reflect, write, and share their experiences with each other—building a supportive community, fostering leadership skills and helping teachers find fulfilment within their careers.
About the idea
The New Teacher Foundation is a hub for NEI’s Teacher Growth Model
Based at Soochow University, the New Teacher Foundation launched a range of programs to support trainee and in-service teachers. The aim is to build a network of well-qualified educators — who will go on to improve education quality across China, particularly in rural areas with less access to resources.
Every year, 40 students from the Soochow University Teachers College will join a special four-year program, and benefit from mentors in and outside the university as they’re coached in new teaching methods. There’s also a professional development program for rural teachers, to support skills-building in connection to revitalization plans for those districts.
Professor Zhu hopes to invite distinguished educators to train classroom teachers. Over the course of three years, principals and teachers are recruited from all parts of China to join a voluntary training camp and learn from mentors and peers. This offers valuable perspectives for China’s future educators from a wide range of disciplines and regional experiences.
The New Teacher Foundation also draws on expertise from across the global education community
Another program focuses on sharing effective ideas and practices in education between China and other parts of the world. The team plans to bring together educators and policymakers and facilitate cross-cultural exchanges, so they can adapt and adopt NEI’s principles in their local contexts.
Learnings from the programs will feed into an open, accessible learning platform
The Online Learning Hub is a teacher development community that encourages self-learning through reading, writing, and communication. It fosters a reading community and builds a resource bank for teachers across China, who regularly gather for expert-led book-sharing sessions.
Our 2022 laureate Professor Yongxin Zhu devoted his project funds to support this project from January 2023 to December 2025.
Impact and results
Supporting rural teachers in China
Since its launch in 2023, the three-year professional development program has delivered training to rural teachers across four counties in China. These include an autonomous ethnic minority county — which has a higher degree of self-governance for the local ethnic minority population — as well as areas that are part of China’s rural revitalization plan.
The team’s work in Jingning county, for example, covers 342 schools, facilitating sharing and exchange between schools and building a cross-school peer support network for over 6,700 staff members. In turn, they support over 65,000 students.
Fostering exchange of best practices
In partnership with the Teacher Education Centre under the auspices of UNESCO, the New Teacher Foundation organized its first seminar in November 2023. Leaders and representatives from international organizations, academia, and universities in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas participated in the seminar, themed ‘High Quality Teachers, High Quality Education’. They also visited primary and secondary schools in China, and went on college tours. The team plans to host this seminar annually.