A new round of exchanges between Chinese and British math teachers began on Monday with 107 teachers from the UK in Shanghai, the largest number since the program began in 2014. After a day’s orientation at Shanghai Normal University, the teachers will go to primary and middle schools in nine city districts. On Sunday, the university will hold a workshop for teachers from both sides. The teachers’ visit ends on November 22. In February next year, 70 Shanghai primary school math teachers and 24 from middle schools will go to the UK for a two-week visit. Andrew McCully, director general for early years and schools in the UK’s Department for Education, said more than 20,000 teachers had interacted with their counterparts in Shanghai over the past six years and the government would continue to sponsor the program to promote Shanghai methods of math teaching in the UK with plans to have 11,000 schools in England involved. The UK has been actively promoting educational exchanges with China. Since 2013, more than 55,000 British students have participated in study, internship and teaching programs. The UK government has been providing financial support for such programs and encouraging younger students to take part in such exchanges. Its Mandarin Excellence Program will support 5,000 British students in intensively learning the language and aims to have them fluent by 2020. Yang Xiaochun, deputy director of the people-to-people exchange center of China’s Ministry of Education, said he hoped for deeper educational exchanges and more British teachers and people from all walks of life communicating between the two countries, benefiting more young people and promoting healthy development of the bilateral relationship. Li Yongzhi, deputy director of the Shanghai Education Commission, said the program had proved popular as the number of visiting teachers had reached a record high and the UK government had made plans to expand the program in the next five years to secondary schools. “Meanwhile, the program is especially meaningful as the professionalism and hard work of the participating teachers have also infected the students,” he said. The exchange program was initiated after students from Shanghai topped those from other countries in the PISA test in 2009 and 2012. It began in September 2014 when 60 math teachers and 10 principals from England arrived in Shanghai to observe math teaching in local schools and meet their counterparts, while Shanghai also sent 60 Shanghai teachers to the UK in November that year to teach in 22 British schools. The number of participating teachers from each side has increased year by year. To date, 830 British and Chinese teachers have benefited from the program which features mutual visits, theoretical discussions, immersion teaching exchanges, class demonstrations, field investigations and sharing experiences.