Walk into a Kindergarten room at YCIS Shanghai and you'll notice something before you notice anything else: there are two teachers at the front, not one. One speaks to the children in English, the other in Mandarin, and neither is translating for the other. This is the school's signature Co-Teaching Model — and it's the clearest single expression of what YCIS has been building for more than three decades. At YCIS, bilingualism isn't a subject on the timetable. It's the air in the room.
For families weighing up an international education in Shanghai, YCIS is one of the city's founding names — and one of its more distinctive ones. Here's a closer look at what makes it tick, who it tends to suit, and how it fits into the wider picture.
At a glance
A School With Deep Roots
YCIS Shanghai holds a genuine place in the city's history: when it opened in 1993, it became the first international school in Shanghai to be officially recognized by and registered with the Chinese government. But the story starts earlier and further south. The first Yew Chung school was founded in Hong Kong in 1932 by Madam Tsang Chor-hang, who built it around a simple, ambitious idea — that education could help make China stronger, and that children flourish when two cultures are treated as equals rather than one being taught as a foreign visitor.
That founding philosophy still runs through everything at YCIS today. The school describes its purpose as blending East and West so thoroughly that students don't just understand a second culture — they come to value it as their own. Nearly a century of iteration has gone into working out how to actually deliver on that, and the Co-Teaching Model is the result.
The Co-Teaching Model, Explained
In most bilingual programmes, a child gets English in one block and Chinese in another, often with the "main" language quietly doing the heavy lifting. YCIS turns that on its head. In its Early Childhood and Primary classrooms, each class is led by two qualified teachers working as genuine partners — one a native English speaker, one a native Chinese speaker — each using their own language naturally throughout the day.
The effect is subtle but powerful. Children don't experience Chinese as a lesson they switch into; they experience it as one of two normal ways the classroom operates. A story might be read in English, a game played in Chinese, and a project discussed in both. Kids learn to move fluidly between the two languages and, just as importantly, between the cultural instincts that come with them. The school's own framing is that students become comfortable "moving between cultures" — a skill that turns out to matter far beyond the classroom in an interconnected world.
It's also worth naming what this model asks of a school: two lead educators per class is a significant staffing commitment, and it signals where YCIS chooses to invest.
The Curriculum Journey, From Age 2 to 18
YCIS is built as a continuous pathway rather than a set of loosely connected stages:
- Early Childhood (ages 2–5): A play-based, whole-child foundation delivered through the Co-Teaching Model, with equal weight on English and Chinese and a strong focus on character, curiosity, and social skills.
- Primary: The bilingual, co-taught environment continues while academic foundations are built on a curriculum anchored in the National Curriculum for England and enriched with elements drawn from strong education systems worldwide.
- Secondary → IGCSE: As an accredited Cambridge examination center, YCIS prepares students for IGCSE qualifications.
- Upper Secondary → IB Diploma: As an IB World School, YCIS offers the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, with a notable share of graduates achieving the bilingual IB Diploma — a fitting endpoint for a bilingual education.
Two extras round out the picture. YCIS also offers the HKDSE (Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education) as an alternative senior pathway, giving families more than one route through the final years. And running the entire length of the school is its Chinese Language and Culture Studies programme — a proprietary curriculum the school describes as the longest-running of its kind among Shanghai's international schools, enriched with field trips and excursions across China so that language learning is grounded in real cultural experience.
Six Campuses, One Network
YCIS spans six campuses in Puxi, Pudong, and the Lingang New Area, positioned to serve international families in the city's main expat neighborhoods. That footprint means families can usually find a campus within reach of home or work, whether they're settled in Hongqiao and Gubei on the Puxi side or around Century Park in Pudong.
There's a second, less obvious advantage to being part of a larger network. YCIS belongs to the wider Yew Chung / YCYW family, with sister schools in Hong Kong, Beijing, Chongqing, Qingdao, and Silicon Valley, all sharing the same educational philosophy and curriculum. For globally mobile families — the kind who might get relocated mid-school-year — that shared DNA makes moving between campuses considerably less disruptive than starting over somewhere entirely new.
Recognition Worth Knowing About
YCIS is fully accredited by two of the international education world's most respected bodies — the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) and the Council of International Schools (CIS) — alongside its Cambridge International and IB World School authorizations. One distinction stands out: YCIS is the only school in China to have received the Cambridge Award for Excellence in Education. Accreditations aren't the whole story of a school, but they're a useful signal that an institution's practices have been examined against external standards rather than just marketed well.
Who Tends to Fit Here?
No school is right for every child, and YCIS is refreshingly specific about what it's for. It tends to suit families who want bilingualism to be authentic rather than decorative — parents who see fluency in both English and Mandarin, and genuine cultural fluency alongside it, as a long-term investment in their child. It's a natural home for globally minded, internationally mobile families, and for children who thrive in a whole-child environment that values character and community as much as exam results.
Families for whom Mandarin is a lower priority, or who want a single-national-system experience, may find the bilingual emphasis more than they're looking for — which is exactly the kind of honest fit question worth asking early, before an application, rather than after.
The Bottom Line
YCIS Shanghai is a school that knows precisely what it is. Three decades in, it has stayed committed to a founding conviction — that two languages and two cultures deserve equal footing — and built an entire pedagogy, from the two-teacher classroom up, to make that conviction real. For the right family, that clarity is the whole point.
Explore the full YCIS Shanghai profile on the NovaEd Directory — curriculum, campuses, admissions, and student-life details in one place.
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