Reflecting on the success of Mainland China’s Oxford Day partner conference

In August, our Mainland China team hosted our latest partner conference – Oxford Day 2023 – in Shanghai, after a four year break due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Over 100 of our partners and industrial players gathered together to discuss the opportunities and challenges facing the education industry in China.

Rui Ding, Managing Director, opened the conference with a keynote speech titled ‘Reading: The Starting Point for Children’s Learning in the New Era’, and explained why reading is still the starting point for children growing up in a time with rapid technological and social change. He pointed out that reading can nurture children’s curiosity, imagination, and creativity, as well as their ability to judge and focus, empowering them to face the future with confidence.

Rui said that “reading” is not only about reading words, pictures, books or films, but also about experiences, and that reading and experiences should go hand in hand. In China, we hope to work with our partners to create a diverse array of products that meet the needs of Chinese learners and enrich the learning experience, encouraging them to read nature, humanities, and science, and read to a brighter future.

Evolving needs of young learners

In the morning session, Helen Sun, Chief Content Officer, provided a comprehensive overview of our content strategy and latest developments. She emphasized that, in the era of artificial intelligence (AI), children’s creativity remains unparalleled and irreplaceable, and it is our responsibility to safeguard and nurture their imagination.

Felix Zhao, Senior Academic Manager, shared insights on learners’ evolving habits, needs, and learning environments, and how we are using these findings to ensure we give them high-quality resources which will help to address their challenges when learning.

Learning through stories

Ivy Zhu, Director of Content Development for Local Strategic Programmes, and Marsha Hua, Content Development Consultant, elaborated on our local content product for China and Hong Kong, the Talk about…with Oxford series (TAO). Based on the principle of “Learning through stories”, the TAO series is the latest children’s encyclopedia series that integrates knowledge points into engaging stories to provide learning experiences for children. With over 1,000 captivating stories, the TAO series covers pre-school and primary school levels, enabling children to independently learn about China and subjects such as world culture, English, science, and economics.

Six lively parallel panel discussions took place in the afternoon of Oxford Day, during which colleagues and guests debated topics such as well-rounded education, integrated and digital content solutions, and new media sales channels – concluding a successful Oxford Day for 2023.