Celebrating 10 Years of Quality International Education

A 10th birthday celebration should be a spectacular affair, and it was no different at Wellington College in Tianjin last week. The school’s official launch of its 10th anniversary coincided with Teacher’s Day on Friday 10th September. It marked the start of a year-long series of community events aimed to mark the establishment of the school in 2011.

It takes time for a tiny acorn to grow into a mighty oak, and so it is with a school. However, even from its first year, with 220 pupils on the roll and 27 expatriate teachers, the school’s ambition for its learners was evident.

The Founding Team 2011

The school’s archives include this extract of the first staff handbook, dated August 2011: 

“We aim, by building upon the honourable history of our parent school in England, dating back over 150 years, and adapting its values and traditions for the 21st century, to establish the College as the leading and most inspiring coeducational international school in China. We aim to be a ‘world class’ school, which compares with the very best establishments anywhere in Asia, Europe, North America and beyond, with a reputation centred on breadth of excellence. Strong and effective leadership and a commitment to continual self-improvement in all areas of school life will be vital in achieving this aim.” 

The celebrations on 10th September showed just how far the school has come in its journey to excellence, as envisioned in these founding principles.

Bilingual Nursery Redevelopment Ceremony 

The school now has public examination results and university destinations that do not just rival some of the best schools in Britain but across the globe. The Nest is a flourishing bilingual Early Years centre, preparing pupils for success in the years of formal schooling.

The Junior School’s curriculum is a compelling blend of the most challenging aspects of the English national curriculum, allied to the rigours of extension mathematics, multi-level Mandarin education and the cross-curricular breadth of the International Primary Curriculum. Once in the Senior School, pupils focus on the IGCSE and A Level courses, examinations determining their academic pathways after school. The key, of course, is that this rigour and our collective high expectations of every individual drives the progress of our learners.

Awards Lunch with our Founding Pupils

Inevitably, much has changed over the past decade. Long gone are the school’s plans to mirror our sister school in England, The Wellington College, with Saturday morning school. Compulsory lessons in the morning have been replaced with a thriving Saturday Activity Programme which offers academic, cultural and sporting programmes for over 200 youngsters from our community.  We also have after school activities three times a week; in the early days, it was felt that one of these was sufficient for pupils, although the end of the school day was only five minutes earlier than at present. In that first year, parents were advised against allowing their children to bring valuable personal items, “like Mp3 players”, into school. Mobile phones were clearly still some time away from reaching the level of ubiquity they currently enjoy!

Many of these changes were inevitable once the school started to grow. Unarguably the most significant, though, has been how the school community has grown together through its common values – courage, respect, integrity, kindness and responsibility. They have been absorbed into the very DNA of the school. As a result, this means that pupils, parents and staff all understand the guiding principles of our school, and by enrolling, they actively seek out an educational ethos that imbues its pupils with not just the skills and learning capacity to thrive in the wider world, but also a moral compass.

5 and 10 Years Service Award 

The school never seeks to make clones of our pupils. Instead, through the diverse programmes we offer and the values which underpin all our decision-making, we aim to give our young people the very best chance of going on to lead happy, fulfilled and engaged adult lives. 

Founder’s Library Dedication Ceremony 

Our sister school in England is over 160 years old and remains an outstanding, vibrant centre of learning for its pupils. In that context, ten years are just the first few steps in a long journey, but it does not stop us from working to realise a similar level of worldwide recognition and sustained academic success. Two landmarks for the 10th anniversary, the refurbishment of the Early Years building and new outdoor learning zone, and the rededication of the library as the Founder’s Library, were both statements of intent about the commitment to learning at Wellington. They represent not only a major investment in the future of our facilities, but crucially, to the outstanding education of our pupils. 

Greetings from the Alumni of Wellington College Tianjin on the School’s 10th Anniversary