Medium-Term Plan for International Education in Primary and Secondary Schools

IE2.0 has three goals: ‘Cultivating Global Citizens,’ ‘Promoting Education Internationalization’ and ‘Expanding Global Exchanges.’ Therefore, it puts forward three strategies: ‘Enhancing the SIEP,’ ‘Creating a Friendly Internationalized Education Environment’ and ‘Establishing International Linkage Mechanisms.’ Hence 13 action plans have been created to achieve the goals of IE2.0.

IE2.0 adopts the strategy of ‘Enhancing the SIEP’ to achieve the goal of ‘Cultivating Global Citizens.’ On account of the different characteristics and resource conditions of each school, there might be variations in the implementation of this strategy in practice. Therefore, the promotion strategy is not to set the national standard of IE performance ratings but to encourage schools to manage the SIEP according to their own conditions and needs.

Four dimensions of SIEP of IE1.0 had been promoted simultaneously. These were: course integration, international exchange, teacher professional development, and school internationalization. However, from the review of the implementation of the SIEP in schools, it was found that it was difficult to control the quality of teacher professional development workshops organized by the schools. Therefore, in IE2.0, the teacher professional development will be planned, organized, and managed by the MOE. In future, the SIEP will promote three action plans through three dimensions: curriculum development and teaching, international exchange, and school internationalization.

IE2.0 adopts the strategy of ‘Creating a Friendly Internationalized Education Environment’ to achieve the goal of ‘Promoting Education Internationalization.’ This strategy aims to provide easy access to professional development for teachers and educational administrators, remove regulatory obstacles on education internationalization for students, and provide necessary assistance to all IE promoters. A friendly internationalized education environment can not only facilitate education internationalization in primary and secondary schools, but also is an essential condition to successfully achieve strategy 1, ‘Enhancing the SIEP,’ and strategy 3, ‘Establishing International Linkage Mechanisms.’

The establishment of IE2.0 is based on the supporting system of IE1.0. Furthermore, it creates a friendly internationalized education environment in which the seven action plans from three dimensions: ‘promoting the accreditation of teachers and educational administrators in internationalization,’ ‘reviewing and revising educational laws and regulations of internationalization,’ and ‘establishing supporting networks for internationalization’ can be carried out.

IE2.0 has adopted strategy of ‘Establishing International Linkage Mechanisms’ to achieve the goal of ‘Expanding Global Exchanges.’ The MOE will, in conjunction with each educational authority to jointly establish a network that is connected to the world, internally coordinating international exchange strategies of each educational authority and externally acting as the official contact for international exchanges for primary and secondary schools.

The joint collaboration of each educational authority provides the foundation of IE2.0, which not only strengthens the integration of international resources, but also assists each educational authority to introduce foreign resources and establish rapid, convenient and effective international communication channels. The international linkage mechanisms consist of three levels, the International Education Alliance (IEA), the International Education Cooperation Platform, and the International Education Resource Center (IERCs). The IEA is at the national level; the IECP is a cooperation platform which connects with the public and private sectors; the IERCs are local level systems established by local educational authorities.