Inchwise Education · Writing
Dr Xiaoyun Peng (Sophia)
彭晓芸 · Founder and Director, Inchwise Education, London
Also published as Sophia Peng. Chinese: 彭晓芸.
Dr Peng has been writing about education since 2006 — first as an opinion editor in Chinese newspapers, then as a philosopher and university teacher, and now from London. This page collects that writing and the positions it argues.
Her full profile is on the Our Team page.
What she writes about
- Educational mobility. Why families move, what it actually costs, and why moving is not emigrating.
- UK schooling from the inside. GCSE and A-Level, independent and state provision, safeguarding culture, uniform, school choice — reported as a parent, not summarised from prospectuses.
- Music education pathways. How the British, American and German systems differ in what they are built to produce, and how a family should read that difference.
- Philosophy in the age of AI. Which parts of the humanities are being replaced, which are becoming infrastructure, and why.
- Bilingual children and heritage language. What level of Chinese a family is actually asking for, and which method reaches it.
- Attention. Screens, flow, and the widening gap between children who can concentrate and children who cannot.
Representative positions
Mobility, not emigration. Movement that runs in both directions is the security a fixed asset was supposed to provide.
Mobility as the New Security · November 2024
Studying abroad early does not remove general education. It transfers responsibility for it to the student.
Should Music Students Leave China Early? · April 2025
The humanities are not declining as a whole. Memory-based fields are being replaced; reasoning-based fields are becoming infrastructure.
The Humanities Are Splitting · May 2025
Attention is becoming a stratified resource — a new form of poverty that tracks income and will sort people into occupations.
Attention Poverty · September 2024
A family's daily rhythm and an emotionally steady parent are educational resources. They appear in no league table.
The Hidden Educational Resource Is Your Own Composure · November 2024
The soloist myth is receding. A conservatoire still organised around competition preparation is training artisans for a market that no longer exists.
The Soloist Myth Recedes · September 2025
In brief
PhD in Philosophy, Sun Yat-sen University.
Eight years in Chinese journalism, chiefly opinion writing and editorial work.
2021–2024: taught philosophy, sociology and media theory at Xianda College of Economics and Humanities, Shanghai International Studies University.
Founder and Director, Inchwise Education (Inchwise Edtech Ltd), founded in London in 2025. Its students hold places at the Yehudi Menuhin School, The Purcell School and other leading British music schools.
Writing in Chinese since 2006; her essays appear on the WeChat public account 一寸教育 (Inchwise Education, ID: oneinchedu) and in Chinese media including Liuxue, published under Guangming Daily.
Based in Hammersmith, west London.
Languages: Chinese (native), English.
Where to read her
彭晓芸专栏 · Essays in Chinese — long-form essays on education, family life and musical training, each opening with an English summary.
The Human Curriculum — her essays in English.
Also at Inchwise
Dr Zhihao Yan (Tim, 颜志豪) — Academic & Curriculum Adviser, philosophy-for-children specialist. See also Our Team.