Shanghai schools recognized as excellence

Five more schools featuring excellence in finance, drama, science, engineering and technology education were granted the title of "magnet" high school on Wednesday by Shanghai Education Commission.

One of the newly recognized schools, the High School Affiliated to Shanghai Theater Academy, sees about two-thirds of its graduates admitted into universities specialized in dramatic arts such as Shanghai Theater Academy, the Central Academy of Drama and Beijing Film Academy.

"Being named a magnet high school means we can cooperate with other schools to make the best use of our resources, learn good practices from them and become even better at what we do," said Xiao Ying, principal of the school.

Shanghai now has a total of nine magnet high schools. Besides conventional enrollment via the middle school graduation exam and high school entrance exam, the magnet schools are allowed to organize their own admissions and select students with talent to match the schools' characteristics.

A program to incubate distinctive high schools was launched in 2011. Since then, a total of 56 schools have joined the program. Their special characteristics include unique strengths in the humanities, science and technology, art, engineering, social sciences, finance and medicine.

Last year, four schools — Shanghai Caoyang High School, Shanghai Ganquan Foreign Languages Middle School, the High School Affiliated to East China University of Political Science and Law and Beicai Senior High School Affiliated to Shanghai Maritime University were the first to be named as magnets.

They have been joined this year by Dongchang High School Affiliated to East China Normal University (finance), the High School Affiliated to Shanghai Theater Academy (drama), No.2 Middle School Affiliated to Tongji University (science), the High School Affiliated to the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (engineering) and Jiading No.2 High School (technology).