According to an article I found today in The Independent there is a dire shortage of qualified teachers of Mandarin Chinese in the UK – only about 100 at the moment – and at the same time increasing numbers of schools want to offer Mandarin lessons. Apparently some 500 schools in the UK currently teach Mandarin, though most do so as a taster course or as an after school club.

The government has a plan to train a thousand new Mandarin teachers, but that’s going to take quite a while. In the meantime one school mentioned in the article is using video conferencing to provide Mandarin lessons, which is a good temporary solution, though not as good as having a real, live teacher in the classroom.

So if those learning Mandarin in school continue studying it at university, there should be plenty of jobs available to them as teachers, at least.