FOCAL POINTS

Education and Science Society (ESS), in conjunction with the Education Bureau of Heilongjiang Province, held the 46th annual Basic Education Conference at the Heilongjiang University in Harbin. It was a four - day long conference (07/20 - 23), attended by one thousand teachers and principals from 17 provinces and cities. The conference was unequivocally positively received by the attendees and the educational institutes on the county, township and village levels.

Recognizing the quality of teachers is essential for success in education. Since 1993, in conjunction with one to two educational institutes, ESS has held 46 Annual Basic Education Conference/Workshops for Rural Teachers in 17 consecutive years. The cumulative number of attendees is well over 30,000. To those attendees, new concepts have been introduced, new methodologies have been implemented, and improved teaching results have been produced. The effect and influence is profound and long lasting.

The objective and format of the ESS Basic Education Conference: through accelerated short term courses, to introduce progressive educational theories and to share teaching experiences from overseas and other parts of China, providing inspiration and references to the rural teaching staff; to encourage the attendees to explore and innovate through experiments and to organize resources on educational know-how as well as updated teaching methods; to cultivate a new breed of teachers with a worldwide horizon, in order to generate the kind of quality education complementary to the Chinese culture.